Laylee’s Kin was a very moving documentary on how the oppression of the African American culture has been generationally effected by the cotton industry. It was apparent in Layee’s family how illiteracy, incarceration, and discrimination caused a cycle of poverty in the families of Tallahatchie County. The film introduced a few individuals that really stood out in their film for their resiliency. Granny, Laylee’s Granddaughter, really stood out to me in the film dealing with the incarceration of her father Reggie. Reggie Barns, the superintendent of the school who was battling a probation due to poor testing scores. The children of the school are close to a penitentiary, they are oppressed by the government with the lack of funding for the …show more content…
These families rely on grants to provide them roach and rat-infested trailers. In the beginning of the movie, Laylee received a trailer that was disgusting when she went to inspect it and realized all the work that she had to put it into it. She stated that “it could be worse.” It was really sad to hear her say that due to her situation. The Tallahatchie County depends on the cotton industry. The city economic development greatly depends on the laborers of the cotton field. Without the people of the cotton field, there would be no production for cotton. No cotton picking would be detrimental to the economy. The generations of families that lived in this city all came from families of cotton pickers, the older generations started to pick cotton at very young ages and drop out of school at very young ages to work for the farming agencies. The crop farmers pushed that education was not important, generationally that is apparent in the families now. Structurally Mr. Burns School system and the city is oppressed. AS explained earlier, it will be difficult to bring in the proper personnel to bring the city out of the oppressed cycle due to the lack of resources to attract these individuals. Mr. Burns also explained that most of the funding is being sourced to the penitentiary that is close to the school and if they could get just two percent of their funding to educate the children maybe it can reduce the incarceration