Another View by Charles Hallman
This easily could have been a sports movie — a local Black high school football player left his segregated school and the teammates he grew up with in North Carolina and transferred to an affluent White school in his senior year. However, he was later denied a rightful spot on the state’s all-star game because of race, which later resulted in one of North Carolina’s most volatile civil rights cases.
A White classmate, Hugh “De” Kirkpatrick, who shared the Black player’s last name, wrote about what happened to Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick on his college essay application, which he later said helped him get accepted into Harvard.
But decades later, Jimmie Lee and De shockingly discovered that they shared more than a last name, and their story is “A Binding Truth,” a film directed by Louise Woehrle. We saw her compelling film at the 2024 Twin Cities Black Film Festival (TCBFF) during an October weekend at the Capri Theatre in North Minneapolis. It was one of 26 films, 16 of them by local filmmakers.
I annually look forward to sitting with my popcorn and watching films and shorts mostly done by Blacks. According to TCBFF Founder Natalie Morrow, I’ve probably attended all but one or two festivals in the 22 years she’s held it in various places around the Cities.
“Me being a White woman from Minnesota,” Woehrle, an Edina native now residing in Deephaven, told me after her film was screened, “I feel like I could be perceived as this oddball. But to be accepted to this festival, it just speaks so highly of the [festival] director.”
Last week TCBFF announced that “A Binding Truth” won this year’s Best Documentary award. A year ago the film won Best Feature Documentary at the Twin Cities Film Festival.
During a post-film Q&A, Woehrle told Morrow that she basically stumbled upon the story of the two Kirkpatrick’s: “It happened kind of by chance,” she admitted. Her cousins told her about it and suggested it should be her next film project. “We started [filming] in early 2020,” said Woehrle.
“A Binding Truth” serves as a catalyst for meaningful conversations about race, justice, and the truth of America’s history with slavery. And, of course, there’s sports as well.
Woehrle noted that she admired Jimmie Lee’s “genealogical exploration, because there were no records before the Civil War,” she pointed out. “We European Americans [like] myself, I can go back through ancestry.com and find all my Irish relatives and all my German relatives — I’m half and half.
“But he can’t go through the journey that he’s been on for many, many years long before he meets De,” the director continued. “I think the other thing that really hit me about Jimmie’s story is that even though it was hard…he learned that he was very proud of his ancestors, and just there’s things in him that he can identify that was passed down through the DNA, and just how proud he was.”
The film is getting rave reviews and PBS is planning to broadcast it sometime in 2025. Woehrle said she hopes it appears during Black History Month in February.
“A lot has happened,” said Woehrle. “We have done many screenings for universities, churches, anti-racism groups, and history centers all around the country. We’re very excited.
“I feel like I was a conduit for this story,” concluded Woehrle. “I wanted to capture the truth of their story, not spin it, in a way that’s wonderful and lovely. I wanted to share their story.”
For more information, visit the Whirlygig Productions website >
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.