n 1967, 19-year-old Winfred Rembert was pulled from a jail cell in Georgia and nearly lynched by a mob — one of the only people on record known to have survived one. He carried that trauma for decades, until a friendship with Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker, the physician who treated him, changed how he faced it. In 2016, Whitaker did something the country had never done: she held a funeral for the more than 4,000 African Americans lynched during the Jim Crow era who were never given one.
A New Yorker Documentary, Ashes to Ashes follows both journeys — Rembert's survival and the art he turned to for healing, and Whitaker's mission to finally speak the names of the thousands who were denied even a proper burial.
A New Yorker Documentary, Ashes to Ashes follows both journeys — Rembert's survival and the art he turned to for healing, and Whitaker's mission to finally speak the names of the thousands who were denied even a proper burial.
n 1967, 19-year-old Winfred Rembert was pulled from a jail cell in Georgia and nearly lynched by a mob — one of the only people on record known to have survived one. He carried that trauma for decades, until a friendship with Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker, the physician who treated him, changed how he faced it. In 2016, Whitaker did something the country had never done: she held a funeral for the more than 4,000 African Americans lynched during the Jim Crow era who were never given one.
A New Yorker Documentary, Ashes to Ashes follows both journeys — Rembert's survival and the art he turned to for healing, and Whitaker's mission to finally speak the names of the thousands who were denied even a proper burial.
