To A World Unknown

EXT. HOLLY RIDGE CEMETERY, DAY.
CAPTION: ‘April 28, 1934

A brand new 1933 Chevrolet Mercury sits bogged down in the mud, and a group of African American men carries a coffin through a cemetery and towards a freshly dug grave, next to which are a black preacher and two wooden sawhorses. Behind them a slender, thirty-something-year-old Black woman follows supported by two other women, all of them sobbing. At the rear, a twenty-year-old Black man dressed in a suit wipes the tears from his eyes.

The pallbearers carry the coffin past a large interracial crowd and set the coffin on the sawhorses, step back, nod in deference to the coffin, and then join the group.

One pallbearer remains with his hands on the coffin, tears pouring down his face.

This is blues singer, Eli Green.

The preacher steps forward and delivers an inspired eulogy that shocked some of the white folks in attendance, as his traditional style and delivery were unusually animated and loud.

PREACHER
"Do you think he was a good man, Mister Calvin? In Philippians III, the Apostle Paul started out as a bad man, who started out doing wrong. So God blinded him. It brought about a change and Paul pressed toward the mark of the high calling. Mister Green, you and Chas. surely played them blues, but he was pressing toward the mark in the end. Let the mark be Jesus Christ. Now, how about we send him on his way?

I want to say to Mister Patton, sleep on and take your rest. You won’t see him for a long time but you'll see him again in that resurrection morning when the twelve gates of the city swing open. This man and his music made the way for us."

Eli Green walks over to console the hysterical widow, Bertha Lee Pate, who pushes him away and starts singing.

BERTHA LEE
"Just look
Just look
Just look what the Lord done done"

ELI GREEN
"Just look
Just look
Just look what the Lord done done"

BERTHA LEE AND ELI GREEN
Just look
Just look
Just look what the Lord done done
Lord I know
Lord I – know my –time ain’t long

BERTHA LEE
It was one morning,
When death comes in the room

ELI GREEN
It was one morning,
When death come in the room

BERTHA LEE AND ELI GREEN
It was one morning,
When death come in the room
Lord I know
Lord I – know my –time ain’t long

THE CROWD JOINS IN
Oh hush
Oh hush,
Somebody is calling me
Oh hush
Oh hush,
Somebody is calling me
Oh hush
Oh hush,
Somebody is calling me
Lord I know
Lord I – know my –time ain’t long

FADE OUT:

This is the first scene of a rough draft for the graphic biography of Charley Patton. For the past three years, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund has worked with historians, ethnomusicologists, genealogists, novelists, and the descendants of Patton and his siblings to expose the multitude of myths and racial stereotypes that fill the pages of most volumes about his life and career. Not only have we discovered a mountain of never-before-seen marriage certificates, death certificates, military pension records, land deeds, and other government records, but we have synthesized them with the most recent historical scholarship detailing the lived experiences of African Americans. Anti-racist at its core, the biography has no single author; rather, it is collaboratively written and designed by an inclusive creative team from diverse backgrounds. The expected date of publication is November 2022.