By Jessica L. Dupree
Over the course of 13 days, The Pan African Film festival premiered and showcased the best in Black films and bodies of work that will continue to impact the entertainment industry. One culturally relevant film was Disney-ESPN’s Andscape who featured their newest documentary Scared Soil: The Piney Woods School Story as part of their programming slate honoring Black History Month. Premiering today on Hulu – the uplifting, insightful, legacy-driven film tells the story of the longest-continually operating Black boarding school program in the nation.
The documentary received raving reviews from critics who described it as empowering, life-giving, spiritual, cultural, and urgent. Achieving its goal of amplifying the journeys of school students and staff members of Piney Woods School, the documentary provides a window into the never-before-seen ever-evolving, complex layers of the school and its students.
Celebrated for being a college preparatory school where children come from all over the world for a fighting chance in their life, Piney Woods is one of only four Black boarding schools still standing in the country. Before 1954 there were 100 Black boarding schools and in a world where the fight for diversity and inclusion continues to be a subject matter Institutions like Piney Woods provide the community, friendship, and extended family that Black students need.
Film Director JJ Anderson spoke exclusively with Heart & Soul. “Most people aren’t aware that black boarding schools still exist and they’re all hanging on by a thread. There are only four left, there were 100 before 1954. If anyone has gone to a HBCU or heard about the HBCU experience – the Black boarding school experience is definitely parallel and these schools are designed with Black young minds in mind. Our success, lifting us up when we fail, really keying in on these details so I want people to be aware of how important this institution is,” says Director JJ Anderson.
“Particularly since we’re talking about Piney Woods. This school, the mission of this school was and remains developing children’s heads, hearts, and hands. Not only developing a child in a classroom but also thinking about how the’re interacting with the world, how they’re interacting with each other, how they are exchanging information, how they are developing empathy, how they’re developing accountability, how they’re developing their voice. So important, and then the hands part Piney Woods School has this wonderful agricultural program that was actually designed after Tuskegee’s Agricultural Program. And I believe it is the only Black boarding school in existence that still carries this on. So, it’s about community sustainability and self sustainability,” JJ Anderson explains.
“And the fact that these kids can come to a place like Mississippi where we don’t always get the best narratives out of and kind of live their dreams and be pushed to succeed and be told that you can do it, you are valid, you are beautiful. We need institutions to stay alive and we need money, we need resources – you know they’re important to our future as a whole,” she exclaimed in closing.
Current Piney Woods Director Will Crossley tells Heart & Soul “Piney Woods is the longest, continually operating boarding program in the nation. There used to be 100 programs like Piney Woods and so were currently the longest and the issue is that, again, we don’t have all of the resources that we need but with more resources you can see that our young people will soar.”
For More information, Visit pineywoods.org
