Updated at 3:59 p.m. on March 31
The documentary "Ashes to Ashes" tells the story of a friendship between an Amherst, Massachusetts, doctor and a New Haven, Connecticut, man who became an artist decades after he survived being lynched. In the film, their story coincides with a funeral service held for thousands of Black Americans who didn’t survive.
The service took place at a church in Springfield, Massachusetts, over two days in 2016. Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker had long thought about creating a ritual "homegoing" for the more than 4,000 African Americans who were lynched and died between 1877 and 1950. In fear of further violence, many Black families were not able to give their loved ones funerals.
"I always feel that funerals are not only for the living, but they are for the dead, too," Whitaker said. "When I read about people that were lynched, a lot of them never got their 'ashes to ashes.' I was determined to correct that."
The event began with a horse-drawn hearse carrying to the church a simple casket, which was built by students from Putnam Vocational Technical Academy. A few hundred people attended and were given slips of paper with names of the dead or the words "Unnamed Negro" as they entered.
In the documentary, Whitaker — a kidney specialist, visual artist and writer — is seen leading congregants through the beginning of the funeral.
"There's an African proverb that says, 'You speak my name and I will live forever.' So tonight we will speak some names," Whitaker says.
One by one, people stand up. First a young boy, "My name is Nasir and I'm representing Hamilton."
Then an actress: "My name is Mary Turner. I was the 19-year-old pregnant wife of the wonderful Hayes Turner."
The film weaves between more names and Mary Turner's re-enactment: "When I confronted his murderers, they lynched me and burned my body. They ripped my unborn baby out of my belly, ensuring his death along with mine."
"I am James Howell," says another actor, "and they told me I had a choice: Either I could die with my son or I could watch him die and live to tell the story."
While "Ashes to Ashes" features the funeral event, the short documentary is also about a friendship between Whitaker and artist Winfred Rembert, who survived a lynching in 1967.
Rembert and his wife, Patsy Rembert, now live in New Haven. He grew up poor in Cuthbert, Georgia, picking cotton. As a teenager he joined the civil rights movement. At a demonstration in Americus, Georgia, he was arrested and put in jail without being charged, he said.
Rembert was there for a year, when — in 1967 — he managed to break out of his cell by stuffing up a toilet with a roll of paper and causing a flood. But he was caught, he says in the film, and thrown into the trunk of a car.
"About a 30-minute ride," Rembert says. "They opened up the trunk. I saw these ropes hanging from a tree. Nooses. A place designed that looked like to hang people."
Rembert goes on to describe how the men put a rope around his feet and hung him upside down from the tree. Then a deputy sheriff came at him with a knife.
"And he grab my private parts," Rembert says. "And he took his knife and he stuck me. They was going to castrate me, hang me and burn me. I was 19 years old. There I am like a pig hanging up in a tree, ready to be slaughtered."
But the crowd of men didn’t kill Rembert. Instead he was taken down from the tree and "made an example," Rembert says. They put him in jail and on a chain gang until 1974.
Rembert didn’t tell his wife or anyone about the lynching until 30 years later. It was at that time, much to his own surprise, people started paying attention to his art, something Patsy encouraged him to do.
Using leather tooling skills he learned in prison, Rembert has carved and painted numerous pieces depicting scenes of Black people living their lives — in cafes, swimming, in fields picking cotton, and being lynched. Rembert is working on a series of panels about this own life.
"I'm telling the story about my life and it's gonna take 50 pictures to do it. I've got eight done," Rembert says in the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2Q97pXZE2g
For some, telling a personal story is healing. Not for him, Rembert says.
"Even though those things have been done to me years ago, they're still holding me back," he says.
He questions himself, whether he can change the world with his art.
"I know I'm not a big enough man to change this world," he says, "but I can put a dent in it."
Rembert's memoir "Chasing Me To My Grave" will be published this summer.
While not Rembert's physician, Whitaker said she sees how the lynching — the PTSD — has harmed him. Rembert has been hospitalized frequently, even in just the last few months. In recent years, he rarely sleeps through the night without medication. He has diabetes and hypertension.
"You know, there's quick death and there's slow death," Whitaker said. "I can see he's still in the process of being lynched."
Lynching continues in other forms, Whitaker said. Now it looks like what happened to George Floyd and so many other Black men and women.
"This brutality, being terrorized," Whitaker said. "You never have your circadian rhythm because you’re living under stress."
Whitaker has a son.
"A Black son in America," she said. "I always have this smothering fear that I will get a call, that he'll be taken away with a snap. Think of Black families living with that fear. Constant. It's real."
The documentary was finished before Floyd was killed by police in May 2020 and before the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 was seized by a mob, among them known white supremacists. For Black people to ever live equally in the United States, Whitaker said, the nation has to recognize its wound and clean it.
"Ashes to Ashes," directed by Taylor Rees, was considered for a 2021 Academy Award but didn’t make the final nomination list.
Whitaker was OK with that. It can be streamed for free and she said she doesn't care if they don't make a penny from it. It was seen widely around the world in the past year. People will know what happened.
Editor's note: Winfred Rembert, the artist and lynching survivor featured in "Ashes to Ashes," died Wednesday morning at home in New Haven, Connecticut, according to his agent. He was 75. Rembert's friend, Dr. Shirley Whitaker of Amherst, Massachusetts, wrote on Facebook: "His long time suffering from incomplete Lynching has finally ended!"
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