Bridging the tracks

Two boys brag about their favorite football team while playing with each other on a dirt pile. One is white; the other is Black. In the grand scheme of things, this scene seems insignificant. However, it plays out in a city with a racially charged past while a football game that brings both sides of the railroad tracks is being played in the background. This football game is the Tee Cotton Bowl played between the predominately Black public school Ville Platte High and the predominately white parochial school Sacred Heart.
The scene of the two young residents of Ville Platte on the dirt pile can be seen tonight on Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) as the new documentary Flat Town premiers at 7 p.m.
Filmmaker Bryan Tucker along with Ville Platte Mayor Jennifer Vidrine and Tee Cotton Bowl Co-Founder Tim Fontenot joined host Raymond Partsch III for a virtual roundtable discussion about after an early release of the film last week.
“We had to have a heart-to-heart with Tim that we weren’t going to make a rah-rah film about the Tee Cotton Bowl,” Tucker said. “We were making a documentary appealing to journalistic standards. What was so appealing to us was how such a racially segregated football game could still be played and still be celebrated.”
“We went into it with the question of is this a good thing,” he continued. “That was the question we were trying to answer. We just let the characters tell the story themselves in their own voices.”
One of the characters in the film has nothing to do with the game itself. Her story is different because it is about desegregating Ville Platte High. “When I heard about Grace Vidrine Sibley’s story,” Tucker said, “it was really important for me to get her in the film. When I asked her, I explained to her we were trying to tell the story of the town by the way of the Tee Cotton Bowl. She is an icon in this town for what she did.”
He continued, “I was really thankful she was open with us to tell her story because it does inform how things are the way they are today. I know that’s not just in Ville Platte. That’s in so many towns throughout America. I feel like we have more problems with racism and segregation (in Seattle) than even Ville Platte does. They seem more comfortable talking about it openly. That was compelling to me. I’m just thankful Tim, Jennifer, Grace, and all the people who spoke with us were just open.”
For Tucker, who is a self-described progressive from Seattle, his time spent in Ville Platte making the documentary was the culmination of four trips to the Swamp Pop Capital of the World over a two year period. The trips stemmed from his friendship with Ville Platte native and fellow Seattle resident Christy Vidrine Bauman.
“I just kept meeting these characters and hearing these stories,” Tucker said.
His third trip was to film a documentary about Le Grand Hoorah held at Chicot State Park where he had the opportunity to witness his first boucheree. While there, he was convinced to come back in the fall with his producer Gavin P. Sullivan to work on a documentary about what Mayor Vidrine called “the epitome of sportsmanship and fellowship.”
“That week of the Tee Cotton Bowl is nothing but fellowship, love, sportsmanship, and Blacks and whites coming together and having a good time,” she said. “We’re betting with each other and challenging each other, but, at that one point in that one week of the year, it’s like E Pluribus Unum - out of many, one. We all come together as one city until the whistle blows on Friday night at 7 o’clock. Then they’re the Trojans, and I’m back to being a Bulldog.”
For Fontenot, the game has been given by God and kissed by Jesus as a way of making the world a better place.
“The game itself is pure,” he said. “If we in Ville Platte can (get together), then there’s no reason the rest of the country can’t do it. We have to work every single day. We can’t just say we’re not prejudiced. We’re prejudiced. Everybody has prejudices. If it’s not for color, it might be for economics. To say there’s no prejudice is a lie. To say there’s not people on both sides trying to make it better is a bigger lie from the pits of hell.”
Mayor Vidrine also emphasized how this game between city rivals can make a lasting imprint on society. “Everyone that week loves the atmosphere the Tee Cotton Bowl brings to Ville Platte because racism is set aside,” she said. “I think what we do in Ville Platte for a football game can rocket up to the capitol in Baton Rouge. It can rocket up to Washington, D.C., where they can see us.”
“We just need to sit down and ask the ‘why’ question and the ‘because’ question and have these types of conversations,” she continued. “We can all find some middle ground, and we did it in a football game.”
The game, however, went away for four years. As Fontenot said, it left a void on both sides of town. “When we lost our game because of prejudice and greed and love of power,” he said, “I had old white guys with crew cuts and young Black guys with dreadlocks and baggy pants come up to me and ask how come we don’t play because it was a good thing.”
He continued, “We’re much better together than we are apart. We need each other. I think Ville Platte has an advantage over the big cities because we can’t live as good as we do without each other. We need each other. When we put God first, He puts everything else in line. We play for Christ. That’s why I do it. If we honor Him in a little way, then He’ll honor us in a big way.”
Tucker went on to express sports in general can lead to a big step to unity based on what he “saw in Ville Platte over the days before the game.”
He said, “The two teams came together to have a meal, and I really saw the camaraderie. But, I don’t think it can happen just by playing a football game and then shaking hands afterward. It’s gotta be more than that. I think the Tee Cotton Bowl does a good job creating those situations to actually foster community and relationships between the teams.”
Mayor Vidrine concluded, “If sports fans take the passion and enthusiasm and the love of the game out of the stadium and into the community, it’s a start. If we can do it in Ville Platte, I think people can do it everywhere else because love is the key. We can start with a game and let sports lead to love. Love leads to ending the racism that we have so we can all become in our nation just one people.”