When someone destroyed their mailbox, neither writer/actor Roy Kirkland nor his partner, filmmaker Doug Sebastian, gave it much thought. The 7-foot cross that was burned on their front lawn while they were asleep was a different story.
“It was absolutely horrifying,” says Kirkland. “You just can’t believe that this is still going on.”
That was July of 1993. After living in Atlanta for nearly 10 years, the gay couple had moved to Kirkland’s hometown of Willacoochee, Georgia. They were both excited about living in a big house in a small town, surrounded by Kirkland’s big family.
The joyful homecoming didn’t last long.
The cross-burning made headlines across the South, but it didn’t stop their tormentors. They received death threats on their answering machine. A male voice threatened their lives while several others laughed and encouraged him in the background.
Kirkland was utterly shocked. He knew there were people in Willacoochee, population 1100, who discriminated against gays and other minorities, but never thought they would go after him.
“People know me in this town. They know my family. And they know that I had always been good to them,” he says.
Kirkland stayed in a motel one night after a group of people drove by his home screaming threats. He and Sebastian returned the next morning to find their house had been burned to the ground.
Would they have been killed had they not slept elsewhere that night? Neither wanted to ever find the answer to that question and so they packed what remained of their belongings and left Willacoochee for good.
They tried to bury the past, literally, in a box in Kirkland’s new home in Valdosta, Ga. There they stashed the reminders — newspaper stories, photos, police reports — of the unpunished crimes committed against them.
“I cowered and ran and did not talk about it,” says Kirkland, who has made several films with Sebastian.
Fifteen years after the fact, Kirkland and Sebastian returned to Willacoochee to make A Cross Burning in Willacoochee, a deeply personal documentary about the harassment they endured in the few months they lived in the small town. It has been screening at film festivals, and won the Best Documentary award at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival last October. It will be sold nationally at retail stores starting in May. You can watch the trailer below.
“I had to finally ask myself why did you politely walk away just like they expected you to,” explains Kirkland. “Making this film is our way of finally standing up and shedding light on the fact that these kinds of crimes are still going on.”
Though the crimes were never solved, Kirkland and Sebastian were certain that, in a town of only 1100 residents, someone would know something and come forward. The pair took out a full page ad in the town paper asking for help. They posted the recorded threats, which they still have, on the Internet, hoping someone would recognize the voice on the phone. They filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the files on their case compiled by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
At the time, says Kirkland, they felt the town was against them. A police officer who saw the burned cross on the lawn told them to throw it out and forget it happened. A city councilman brushed off the incident saying that it was not surprising since most of the town is “anti-gay.” The fire that leveled their house, which was Kirkland’s childhood home, was never declared arson.
Over the course of making this film, Kirkland relearned the hard lesson that the town protected the wrong people in this case — the perpetrators of the crime instead of the victims. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations never dug into the case and abandoned it a few months after launching it. The local police closed the book before they really opened it. A few people let Kirkland know that they have information, but didn’t pass it on to him.
“We still don’t know anything,” he says.
In the course of making this film, Kirkland realized that, while his goal was to uncover the perpetrators who went after him, there was a larger lesson to be learned. Finding that name became less important than finding the courage to speak out. In speaking out, he has earned accolades for his work. He has sat in movie theaters listening as audience members gasp and weep. He knows anyone who has experienced discrimination can relate to what he has been through.
“When people come up to me and say they are proud of me that I made this film, that is my reward,” says Kirkland.
Even if nobody ever comes forward about the attacks, he is ultimately the victor because they didn’t scare him away for life.
Chances are that the perpetrators of these crimes are well-aware of the film’s presence given the attention it’s garnered. “They have seen it and they know about it,” says Kirkland. “That is really great relief for me that they know I am finally standing up for myself.”
Photo courtesy of DSP Movies.