This documentary project aims to explore the complex history and cultural significance of Negro Creek, a small tributary of the Blue River that crosses the state line from Jackson County, Missouri into Johnson County, Kansas. Rarely labelled on maps and often considered to be merely a water feature in the neighborhoods it flows through, the creek remained in obscurity for decades until 2020 when local politicians were asked to consider changing it’s name. After a thorough historical review of archival resources, the suburban community living along the creek learned that the name, which many thought was a reference to the Underground Railroad in the era of Bleeding Kansas, more likely referred to a harrowing incident of racial violence when in the 1850s a man fleeing enslavement had attempted to escaped along the creek. Upon being caught, the man had taken his own life rather than being returned to slavery.
Subsequently, the film explores the historical emergence of this tragedy in the quiet neighborhoods of suburban Kansas, where the creek flows through wealthy, deeply redlined communities, and a luxury golf course. The filmmaker takes on their own identity as a white suburbanite who grew up along the creek, grappling with a history that seems both far away and as close as their own back yard.
By combining traditional interviews with local historians and politicians, as well as more experimental, performative sequences that use the creek itself as a canvas for exploring themes of identity and memory, the film seeks to offer a nuanced portrait of a community contending with its past. Developed in two phases, the interviews are presented as inspiration for the Black-identified choreography team to respond with movement and rhythm based work interwoven into the narrative of the creek’s history. Through careful layering of personal narratives and cinematic storytelling, the project aims to create a more inclusive and equitable vision of the future, one that acknowledges and honors the diversity of social realities through overlapping expressions of human experience.