Floyd Graham spoke candidly about his family’s long history of sharecropping on their expansive Mississippi plantation.

“I was white and privileged growing up,” said Graham. “That’s how I acted because that’s how I was treated. When I was eight and nine years old, black people of all ages said  ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ to me. I’m not saying it was right. That was just the way things were. I’m sorry about how blacks were treated. Truly, I am.”

Graham, 58, is an oral historian and a highlight of the annual Barefoot Workshop in the Mississippi Delta. This year, the two-week course in documentary filming ran from Feb. 17 through March 1.

Graham has been a part of the workshop every year since it started in 2004. He descended from one of north Mississippi’s wealthiest landholding families for nearly 200 years.

In the sharecropping system, images of African-Americans working in cotton fields looked very much like those taken during the days of slavery.

“Several hundred field hands would line up in our backyard each morning, waiting to get paid,” he said. “Everybody had 40 acres they were responsible for, but there wasn’t much sharing going on in sharecropping. It kept slavery alive until 1963. Blacks were kept ignorant and deep in debt to the plantation owner. It was very much like slavery.

It wasn’t right, and I’m sorry for what my family did.”

As far as Emerson Able, the workshop’s only African-American filmmaker, was concerned, Graham’s apology was “too little too late.”

“As I listened to Graham talk about his family and the people working on their land, something stirred so deep within me. I felt the rage of my ancestors who had suffered right there in that cotton field. It was cold out there, but I began to sweat.”

Chandler Griffin, 32, a Jackson, Miss., native and the workshop’s creator, said Graham’s narrative is a critical component of Barefoot.

Memphis businessman and filmmaker Emerson Able (second from left) grappled with the “personal pain” he felt about the oppressive sharecropping system on post-slavery plantations in the 20th century. (Courtesy Photo)

“Floyd has always been a part of our project,” said Griffin. “I want film students to go beyond the literal subjects of what he is speaking about. I want them to recognize the universal themes that are relevant to all.”

Able found it difficult to get past Graham’s “literal” content.

“I got angry, and the others didn’t understand why,” Able said. “His attitude was too cavalier. It was 5:30, and dusk was falling. His words took me deep and far away, back to another place. I saw the blood and sweat of our people in that field, and I got angry.”

The ensuing confrontation was not on Griffin’s workshop agenda.

“I blurted out, ‘Then let’s talk about reparations,’” Able said.    Graham took the brunt of Able’s fury but declined to talk about his family’s slave-holding past.

“Like other families, some things that happened are better left untold,” Graham said. “There are things we are not especially proud of, but we weren’t unlike other families back in those times. My father wasn’t as bad as my grandfather was. I’m not as bad as my father was, and I like to think that someday, my son will be better than I am. We were all just products of our time.”

Something unexpected happened, according to Able.

“A healing began for me out in that field. It didn’t feel like a healing at first because it was so painful. But the experience took me to a whole new level in my life. Not only did it give my film project a new dimension and perspective, but it changed me forever on the inside.”    

Graham’s candor had taken Able by surprise.    

“I wasn’t prepared for what this man was saying,” said Able. “It was outrageous stuff – outrageous because the attitudes of these racists are just normal and ordinary for them. I’m 46 years old, 230 lbs., and I was crying in that back seat when we left. I was so angry, I was ready to just leave and go back home.”

Later at dinner, Able sat apart from the others. He was mad at everyone “because they were all white.”

“I didn’t want to see or hear them,” Able said. “I wanted to sit by myself. But Graham walked in, and he came over and sat with me. He said, ‘I am really sorry. How can I help?’”

A sharecropping family is shown on their porch, a traditional gathering place.

Able blasted Graham for being “too insensitive about the hardship blacks suffered at the hand of whites.”

“You can’t say that stuff to me and just leave me cut up to piece myself back together again,” Able said. “You have to participate in my healing. Remember what I am telling you because other blacks will come after me. You have to be sensitive to what we have been subjected to as a people.”

For Graham,  Able’s confrontation offered an understanding of “the burden of past racial injustices that African Americans carry.”

“Before this workshop, two defining moments helped me overcome some of my prejudice,” said Graham. “In 1979, I accepted Jesus as my Savior, and He changed my heart. The second thing was that a childhood friend who was black came to see me after we grew up.”

Graham’s friend told how his family had been mistreated by Graham’s father and how hard sharecropping was on his family.

“This friend dropped by my office several times before he passed on,” said Graham. “He would become angry as he talked about how my father mistreated them. I had no idea my father did that because he was always so generous to me.”

The encounters, Graham said, were life-changing for him.

“I began to understand how black people have been hurt and how deep that hurt runs. I told him I was sorry. And, you know, I really was. He put his arms around me and said, ‘I love you, man.’ Except for the lady who took care of me growing up, a black person had never hugged me before. It was a great awakening for me, and I like to think that those talks gave him some measure of healing, too, before he died. I think they did. I sincerely hope they did.