This summer, CRRJ released Honoring Hosea, a documentary film chronicling the life, murder, and legacy of Hosea “Shant” Carter, a Black World War II veteran lynched in 1948 Marion County, Mississippi, for the perceived impropriety of speaking to a white woman.

Through intimate recollections by his son Jimmie Carter, the film incorporates historical and legal insights from CRRJ Director Margaret Burnham and CRRJ partner, The Louis A. Berry Institute for Civil Rights and Justice Director Ada Goodly Lampkin. The film reconstructs Carter’s life as a devoted father, skilled carpenter, and principled community member.

Weaving archival testimony, verité footage, and historical context, Honoring Hosea exposes the racism that fueled Carter’s killing, the failure of local authorities to pursue justice, and the lasting trauma borne by his family. A chilling narrative unfolds as Carter is hunted down by a white mob and killed, his death later whitewashed by official lies and covered up by systemic complicity.

“Go in the house,” were the last words Hosea Carter spoke to his six-year-old son, Jimmie, before he was gunned down by a white mob in May 1948. Seventy eight years later, in an act of filmic remembrance, Jimmie Carter is determined to honor his father correctly. He travels back to Mississippi in 2024 to document the sites and names of those involved in his father’s death. A more complete record of the events that led to the death of Hosea Carter is presented in Honoring Hosea.

In revisiting past horrors, Honoring Hosea confronts the silence surrounding racial terror and the intergenerational toll of injustice — calling viewers to remember, reflect, and honor the lives lost to America’s legacy of racial violence.

Based on deep, rigorous research from first-person interviews and archival materials, Honoring Hosea shows thebrutality of Jim Crow in the Deep South. In this radical act of memorialization, Hosea Carter’s story becomes something more than a tragic end, but rather the sum of many loving part

Honoring Hosea was written and directed by documentary maker, Eric Gulliver. It was produced by CRRJ’s Associate Researcher, Lydia Beal. The film will be released in 2025. It was premiered during CRRJ’s summer conference, Gathering the Red Record, and Jimmie Carter was present, visibly moved by the film’s moving poignancy.

Trailer and film presentations are planned for fall 2025.