On August 21, 2025, I had the privilege of attending the screening of Natchez, a new documentary directed by Susannah Herbert. Having met Herbert and members of her crew during production, I was immediately curious about how she would approach a city as layered and complex as ours. Natchez is not simply the oldest settlement on the Mississippi River—it is a place where cultures collided and reshaped one another: French, English, and Spanish influence paving the way to American identity. It is also a city marked by both resilience and trauma, where the lives of enslaved Africans and the destruction of Native Americans are essential to the story of its development.
The challenge of any filmmaker is how to tell this history truthfully—without distortion, simplification, or erasure. Too often, narratives about Natchez are shaped by outsiders, who romanticize its grandeur while glossing over the realities of human suffering that made that grandeur possible.
What distinguished Herbert’s work is that she did not attempt to impose her own interpretation. Instead, Natchez allows the story to be told through the voices of those who live here. The film places its trust in the guides and storytellers who walk visitors through the city every day—those whose connections to Natchez are not academic or observational, but lived and deeply felt. Through them, the narrative unfolds with authenticity, complexity, and care.
I left the screening both relieved and impressed. This was not a portrait painted from the outside looking in. It was, instead, a film that respects the perspectives of those who call Natchez home, and who feel compelled to keep telling its story—not as a static past, but as an ongoing dialogue about culture, struggle, survival, and identity.
For audiences, Natchez is more than a documentary. It is an invitation to listen to the voices that have long carried this history, to reckon with both its beauty and its horror, and to honor the people who built this city in the face of unimaginable challenges.
As Director of the Natchez Museum of African American Culture, I see this film as a valuable contribution to the ongoing effort to preserve, interpret, and share our history. It demonstrates that the most powerful stories of Natchez are best told not by outsiders, but by those who live its truth every day.
