Doc Star of the Month: Claudia Lacy, 'Always in Season'

Jacqueline Olive’s debut feature, Always in Season — its title a nod to the year-round racial terror that African-Americans, especially in the Deep South, historically have experienced — picked up the Special Jury Prize for Moral Urgency at this past Sundance Film Festival. Though the film explores the domestic terrorist act of lynching and its legacy through multiple angles — from sober, talking-head interviews to Monroe, Georgia’s harrowing, annual lynching reenactment — the beating heart of the film lies within one specific woman: Claudia Lacy.

Five years ago, Lacy — a native of Bladenboro, North Carolina, who had returned home to raise her teenage son after his older brother Pierre had left for college — was launched into an unthinkable nightmare. Her youngest child Lennon, a high school football star, was found hanging from a swing set in a park, his death immediately ruled a suicide. That Lennon had no history of depression, left no suicide note, and seemed to have injuries consistent with what one local mortician likened to those of a victim of a bar brawl, did not seem to faze law enforcement, which quickly closed the case.

Troublingly, to this day no one has been held responsible for the dubious investigation afforded this supposed suicide. And to this day Claudia Lacy continues to demand transparency from those in charge, her way of grieving while fighting for justice for her son. Which is why Documentary could think of no nonfiction protagonist more deserving of the role of September's “Doc Star of the Month.”

To read my inspiring interview visit Documentary magazine.