Morristown: in the air and sun Screening at Central Cinema

A continuing collaboration with Central Cinema with an introduction by Jessie Wilkerson and Reverend Jim Sessions!

Location: Central Cinema, 1205 N Central St, Knoxville, TN 37917

ABOUT THE FILM—

Filmed over an 8-year period in the mountains of east Tennessee, interior Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez, Morristown: in the air and sun is rooted in the authentic expression of workers who speak about their lives, work, disappointments, and hope. These conversations are combined with scenes in factories, fields, union halls, Mexican stores, city parks, and employment agencies. The documentary travels to the U.S.-Mexican border (El Paso – Juarez) to create deeper understanding of factory flight out of Morristown, and to interior Mexico to look at the forces that cause immigration. Morristown ends with a stunning union victory at a large poultry processing plant in Morristown, Tennessee.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS—

Jessie Wilkerson is a writer, historian, and associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her first book, To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice, was published by University of Illinois Press in January 2019, in the Working Class in American History Series. It was awarded the H.L. Mitchell Prize in recognition of a distinguished book concerning the history of the southern working class and honorable mention by the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award. She is currently working on two books, They’ll Never Keep Us Down: A Women’s History of Appalachia (under contract with Simon & Schuster) and In Sisterhood, In Struggle: Feminisms in the American South (under contract with UNC Press). In 2021, she was named a Carnegie Fellow.

Reverend Jim Sessions’ career in social and economic justice organizations stretches from the 1960s to the present, including his time as director of the Highlander Research and Education Center. During his career, Rev. Sessions also served as director of the Southern Appalachian Ministry, Southerners for Economic Justice, the Commission on Religion in Appalachia, and the Union Community Fund of the AFL-CIO. He also worked as program director for the Children’s Defense Fund’s national training center: Alex Haley Farm and as president of the Working America Education Fund. He has also been a long-time organizer with Interfaith Worker Justice and East Tennessee Jobs with Justice.

FREE and open to the public!