There is no train in the opening scene of ALLENSWORTH, yet the faint sound of a whistle indicates the presence of one. The whistle returns a good ten minutes later, accompanied by equally characteristic clattering, with both sounds becoming so loud that the eyes are sent roaming across the screen in search of the anticipated locomotive. But it isn’t until the subsequent fifth scene—which, like the other eleven of this 65-minute film, is assigned a calendar month by an intertitle—that the expected freight train finally appears on the horizon and crosses the frame, seemingly without end.
Occasional play with off-screen elements is typical of the cinema of James Benning, which is built on unwavering, static shots. In this case, it may seem like an act of ironic self-reference by the 80-year-old American, who previously featured the railroad as the nominal subject of films such as RR (2007) or FROM BAKERSFIELD TO MOJAVE (2021). At the same time, this motif provides one of the few concrete references to the subject of his newest film: the location of California’s only purposely created settlement for African Americans, chosen in large part due to the Santa Fe Railroad, which operated a depot at the site where Allensworth was founded in 1908.
The railroad company, however, refused to appoint residents of the new community to positions of responsibility at the local station, a reflection of the structural racism that could not be overcome by pragmatic separatism. Nor could the community, by then 160 in population, prevent the depot and its grain warehouse from being relocated in 1914 to nearby (majority white) Alpaugh. That same year, Allen Allensworth, the settlement’s founding father and guiding force, died. Born in Kentucky in 1842, he escaped from slavery during the Civil War and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He later studied theology and was appointed as a military chaplain in 1886. By the time of his retirement in 1906, Allensworth was the highest-ranking African American in the U.S. Army.
Entrepreneurship and idealism
Allensworth, California was founded on the principles of entrepreneurship and socio-political idealism, in line with the ideals of African American civil rights activist and social reformer Booker T. Washington. Together with four other like-minded individuals, Allensworth purchased land that was subdivided into parcels and resold to Black settlers. He was still actively promoting his endeavour far and wide when he was struck and killed by a motorcyclist near Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, further trouble was brewing for the town. Existing wells were running low, but the company that had originally sold the land—and remained responsible for the water supply—was unable or unwilling to remedy the situation. As groundwater levels continued to sink, the townspeople struggled to find a lasting solution to the water shortage. It wasn’t until 1968 that a new well was finally drilled, thanks to subsidies and the efforts of locals to replace the arsenic-contaminated water on which the few remaining residents had been dependent. They were living in a “virtual ghost town,” as the African American magazine “Jet” described it. That same year, one resident began campaigning for the town to be transformed into a State Historic Park, which ultimately came to pass over the course of the following decade.
Austerity and idealisation
James Benning’s depiction of this open-air museum distinctively lacks the edifying solemnity usually bestowed upon monuments. Instead he chooses camera angles and lighting conditions that lend a banal austerity to the restored or reconstructed buildings. The same is true for the house that the town’s eponymous founder lived in with his wife Josephine Leavell Allensworth, or for the small library that the latter donated in honour of her late mother. It even extends to the school, a building whose architecture evidently dominated the settlement and which symbolized the high value that the townspeople placed on schooling and qualifications, all in the spirit of Booker T. Washington.
That said, the only interior scene of the film takes place inside the school, which also stands out amongst Benning’s (more recent) oeuvre as text is spoken before the camera. The clothing worn by Faith Johnson, who reads aloud poems by Lucille Clifton, is also significant: The insertion of a photo in the credits makes it clear that the blouse and skirt are modeled on clothing worn by 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford in Little Rock in 1957, when she and eight fellow Black students endured vehement hostility as they took a famous step toward ending segregation nationwide by attending a previously white-only school.
The subtle heroisation thus implied in the classroom scene of ALLENSWORTH can also be understood as an ambivalent commentary on the fate of the California settlement. William A. Payne, for whom the classroom is named, was a teacher and principal of the school after its founding in 1910. (His teaching pay insufficient to live off of, he also hired himself out to mend levees in the summer.) As one of the town’s quintet of founders, Payne sought to provide the community with a sound economic foundation by advocating in 1914 for the establishment of a polytechnic vocational college, modelled after the famed Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Public discussion around the plan, which was supported by white politicians from the surrounding area, took for granted that attendance at the college would be de facto—albeit likely not de jure—reserved for Black students only. In keeping with the theories of Booker T. Washington and the separatism of his own community, this was a limitation Payne was willing to accept. He saw it as a tactical concession to the realities of a racist society for the sake of giving Black people across the state immediate access to a new educational opportunity, not to mention a secure livelihood for the local Black community. At the same time, the college would challenge the prejudices of white-dominated society by producing exemplary graduates.
But the majority of California’s African American activists were no longer willing to make such concessions. Their highest priority was the prevention of a gateway that might resegregate schools, having already been abolished in the state. When the initiative to establish the college failed in the regional legislature in 1915, Black resistance was likely the decisive factor.
Holger Römers lives in Cologne and writes about film mainly for the Berlin daily newspaper "junge Welt" and the Cologne monthly magazine "StadtRevue".
Translation: Hilda Hoy
