Faithfully Divided (2009)

In searching for her family legacy, Paula, a middle-aged woman southerner, learns about a graveyard promise made to a white church by her ancestors at the end of slavery in exchange for land for their newly created independent black church in Upson County, Georgia. The promise looks absurd in the 21st century but helps explain the emergence of racial segregation among the white and black churches to which Paula's ancestors once belonged. The original members of the black churches attended the white church as enslaved persons thus indelibly linking their histories. To learn more about her family history, Paula visits the three churches and learns that the black churches continue fellowship with each other but there is no connection between them and the white church. Efforts to encourage all the churches to come together in recognition of their past connections bring minimal results. But Paula learns more about her family and actually finds the will and grave site of the former slave owner and father of her own great grandfather. Unfortunately, Paula's efforts to meet the slave owner's descendants fail and generally the history of slavery outweighs the desire for racial understanding. The film explores the history and continuing problem of racial segregation in the Christian church and in Islamic and Jewish faith communities in the South