JANS – One Voice, Jackson (MS) Branch NAACP, the City of Jackson Film Office, and Women for Progress of Mississippi, Inc. are sponsoring a showing of an impactful documentary film written, produced, and directed by local award-winning filmmaker Dr. Wilma E. Mosley Clopton.

The event is free to attend and open to the public. It is being held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 29, at the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson.

The documentary film to be showcased is “Food Apartheid.” Produced by NMHS Unlimited Film Productions, this film was made possible by a grant from the City of Jackson’s Human and Cultural Services Department.

Through interviews with various segments of the Mississippi population, the film “Food Apartheid” explores the systematic exclusion of people of African descent from the active participation in the food market. From growing to selling and from transportation to convenience of locations, communities of color continue to struggle, and health inequities are the result of this denial.

While America’s sustainable food movement has been steadily growing, consumers are challenged to truly consider where food comes from – inspiring people to farm, eat local, and rethink approaches to food policy. But at the same time, the movement often neglects the needs and root problems of diverse communities.

“If you take a map of Mississippi showing areas of deep, entrenched poverty with regard to race as it exists in Mississippi, it often overlaps with the heaviest concentration of slaveholding on the eve of the Civil War,” explained Dr. Clopton, president and CEO of NMHS Unlimited Film Productions. “These also happen to be the same places in the state with the worst health outcomes, poor housing conditions, and regular food insecurity. This is food apartheid.”