Morristown: in the air and sun Screening at Central Cinema

A continuing collaboration with Central Cinema with an introduction by Jessie Wilkerson!

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 SPEAKER—

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.

FREE and open to the public!