Reviews

Anne Lewis’s ‘A Strike and an Uprising’ focuses its lens on these invisible workers, and weaves together an alternative history of Texas from the pecan shellers of the early twentieth century through the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2015. Texas radicals, especially women of color, and their hidden histories shine in this beautiful and innovative film. It is rich with archival footage and photographs, and we see the protagonists of these struggles piecing together fragments of their memories and their pasts. The connections between past and present-day struggles are vividly rendered.

A phrase by a former pecan sheller stays with me throughout this moving film: pecans are good to eat but hard to shell. So is memory: to retrieve the history and memory of class struggle, civil rights, cultural equality in Texas, Anne Lewis and her coworkers had to crack through a hard shall of denial, forgetfulness, hegemony, and lies. They reach and uncover the beauty of untold but unforgotten memories of struggle and pride through moving images and dialogues of unsung but singing heroes and shared mobilization. I think of this film as the monument that replaces the removed statue of Jefferson Davis: a monument to equality and freedom against one of oppression.