A Binding Truth

As De Kirkpatrick walks through the well-kept cemetery where his white relatives rest, he confronts the painful contrast with the neglected Black cemetery just behind it.

Two high school classmates from 1965—Jimmie, a Black football star, and De, a white student who respected him from afar—reunite 50 years later after a discovery linking their families changes their lives forever. This personal yet profoundly American story reveals the legacy of slavery, the complexities of race and privilege, and the power of truth in their journey toward healing.

Jimmie Kirkpatrick reflects on the difficult truth of his family’s history of enslavement and the personal journey of reckoning that has followed.

While revisiting his childhood neighborhoods in Charlotte with his son, Jimmie Kirkpatrick remembers the vibrant Black community of the 1960s and the changes that followed.