Always in Season

Always in Season

Sherrilyn Ifill, during her first appearance in Jacqueline Olive’s “Always in Season,” a documentary about the investigation of the death of a teenager, calls lynching a message crime. In 2014, seventeen-year-old Lennon Lacy was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina. The Bladenboro police quickly ruled his death a suicide and appeared to not have done much investigating at all. Claudia Lacy, Lennon’s mother demanded further inquiry into the matter which led to a federal investigation. Neither she nor any of Lennon’s friends believed that he was suicidal. Each of them thought it had been made to look like suicide after homicide in other words, a lynching.

Olive crosscuts the Lacy investigation with two indisputable instances of lynchings, one from 1934 and another from 1946. She goes deep into these crimes so terrible that each year they’re re-enacted by people in Monroe, Georgia and gives every detail possible without leaving any out. Five victims whose stories were documented by this film never received justice; neither did the Lacy family feel as though they got any for their son either (which doesn’t mean Always In Season definitely concludes that Lennon was murdered). But it does thoroughly look into why one might think so based on history.

In 1934 Claude Neal was accused of raping a white woman at her farm; then mob decided to take this law into their own hands and offered victim’s father pre-lynching violent act of revenge. They did not do it under cover of night; as I fill describes echoing them taking ads out local newspapers for upcoming murder put up flyers around town saying things like “hanging bee” come one come all bring friend We know many showed up because also sometimes people would have picnics near while being lynched take pictures with bodies those were considered social events too according NAACP Florida wired governor asking him to intervene on Neal’s behalf but he did not.

The description of what happened to his body before they hanged him in front all are too gruesome for me describe here and olive makes even worse by using visuals farms throughout film; battered bodies like that of Neal which we see became postcard sold fifty cents.

Much “Always season” is taken up by 1946 quadruple lynching at Moore’s Ford Bridge Monroe, Georgia, where every year residents reenact it allowing for current opinions this dark chapter American history be gathered well speaking some murdered individuals’ relatives interviewing both black white townspeople about gets answers no one would expect green says leave past let people rest she also asks what does tell us director green has answer: this isn’t just should never forget since been solved

Olive talks with many of the actors involved in the yearly reenactment, so she gets a wide range of comments and first-person accounts about racism and how it affects everyone. Some had relatives who were murdered; others had relatives who did the murdering. One reenactor tells of seeing her first lynching at three years old as her father and his Klansman friends took her along to their crime. “A lot of wives didn’t know how to deal with their husbands,” she explains, by way of why her mother went along with this. Green describes the viciousness of the crime and how, again reflecting I fill’s words, that the brutality was meant as a message to “uppity” folks who needed reminding of their place.

We see several angles on the reenactment through Olive’s eyes, and though it’s fake, it looks agonizing to watch. There is fake blood and multiple gunshots. One victim is pregnant and meets the worst fate imaginable. I am a jaded viewer of theatrical violence at best, yet I was rattled. Olive cuts to pained reactions from audience members of all races including little black children and while at first I’m shocked that someone would bring their kids to something this violent, then I realize this is part of what we’re looking at: real lynching pictures where KKK members brought their kids along for reasons other than those for which people brought their kids here.

“Always in Season” slowly and methodically connects these events with its current story about the Lacy family’s search for answers as to why they don’t believe Lennon Lacy killed himself. According to Ifill and Bryan Stephenson from the Equal Justice Initiative, the main reason for lynching is a belief there’d been some romantic or sexual intention/interaction between the victim (Black person) and a white woman or girl. Later we meet Michelle Brimhall: Lennon’s white 32-year old ex-girlfriend whose relationship with the deceased was frowned upon by the parents of one of his friends.

Lennon’s older brother tells us that the police held Lennon’s body for three days without giving any answers to the family. “The police department was closed,” he says, incredulous. And we hear that forensics may not have been done. All accounts are that Lennon was very sad about his breakup and the death of his beloved uncle, but also excited to play in the big game scheduled for the day after he died. Lennon was part of an interracial trio of inseparable friends, and even they seem to smell something rotten.

“Always in Season” is a challenging film for many people, but it must be watched. The racial sins of the past, as indicated by its title, flow through the veins of today this documentary does not shy away from showing that. But now we’re in another case where the first thing people say is suicide without even thinking about investigating further or deeper into what might have actually happened because they don’t want to believe it could be anything else. So I understand why some are skeptical and have their reservations.

For all we know there could still be living participants related to this crime committed against African Americans in Monroe during those years when nobody was talking about anything like that happening anywhere near here either -but who knows? And what if Lennon Lacy’s murder turns out not just an unfortunate event caused by unknown persons roaming among his kinfolk uncaught until now.

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