THE ARC OF HISTORY

On November 4th, with the election of Barack Obama, 250,000 Chicagoans and millions more around the country took to the streets in jubilation. For residents in Benton County Mississippi, a rural area southeast of Memphis, in addition to celebration, the moment had a special poignance: the county was among the most organized and active areas in Mississippi during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Watching the returns of the presidential election in November, residents who a generation ago had integrated those schools no doubt felt a sense of pride and accomplishment.

But to what depth do those feelings go?

For all the promise of the civil rights movement in Benton County, the community remains poor. Jobs are difficult to find and young residents are migrating away from the county. By the middle of the 1970s, white students had almost completely left Ashland School for private academies or other schools. Today, Ashland School is 95% black, and Hickory Flat School, located a little further south in the county, is 95% white.

THE ARC OF HISTORY is a documentary film chronicling the journey of two African-American women from Benton County to Washington DC to witness Barack Obama's inauguration. The film follows Katie Reaves, who integrated the county's all-white Ashland High School in 1965, and Amber Williams, now a junior at Ashland.

Along the way, these two women will use their personal experiences to reflect on the past and the future of the county and the nation, culminating in the present moment of Obama's historical inauguration.

What will the reaction of these two characters, separated by only forty years, be? How do they digest the significance of this moment when it’s coupled with the condition of their hometown?

What is the younger generation’s understanding of the past, and what are the older generation’s hopes and fears for the future?