courtesy Philip Scarborough
‘Dear Johnny Reb,’ an Anti-Love Letter to Confederate Memorials in Mississippi by Taylor McKay Hathorn
“Dear Johnny Reb” addresses the history and effects of Confederate statues in regard to Mississippi.
November 11 - 24, 2020 • jfp.ms
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n his recent short film, “Dear Johnny Reb,” Jacksonian Philip Scarborough and a group of native Mississippians lament the damage that these statues have wrought through their immobility, and the film celebrates Mississippi history while indicting its darkest moments. When he was 3 years old, the Jackson-born Scarborough and his family moved to Dothan, Ala., where his interest in filmmaking developed during his teenage years. After studying film at the University of Southern Mississippi, Scarborough returned to Jackson and began working in the film industry, eventually co-founding Spot On Productions with Tom Beck in 2011—a company that produces commercials, documentaries and corporate videos.
which is where they should be. (In the video), I focused on what’s called the sentinels (soldier statues). There are 43 or 44 of those, so I focused on those because most are on courthouse lawns. Since I’m talking to these statues of the confederacy, I focused on the sentinels because they’re statues of people. When I filmed, I thought I did all of them. There were two I didn’t know about, which bugs me, but those two were put up at the same time, by the same people, for the same reasons. So, there’s a continuity that connects the statues. I also wanted to keep it short, and I didn’t want it to be overwhelming. If I had done every statue, I would still be filming. Getting people to be in it was not easy.
You start the video with the Confederate statue in Jackson. What’s the significance of that for you, as a native? I’ve lived in Jackson longer now than I lived anywhere else, and I was born here, at St Dominic’s. I thought it was appropriate to start in Jackson, and it’s also the Capitol.
Really? What was difficult about the recruitment process? Only a third of the people I asked agreed to be in it. Most people said they agreed with the idea, but they said they couldn’t be in it because they worked for the state or for the government. They were—I guess—scared. I don’t completely blame them; they didn’t know how the film would look in the end. I think they were afraid of the repercussions and the blow back from the film—which there hasn’t been any. Everybody who is in it are friends of friends and family friends, because it was just word-of-mouth, trying to get people to be in it. I tried to get a person from every town, but that was kind of impossible. Everyone (who did end up in the video) is a Mississippi resident. That was important to me—that they agree with the premise of the film.
Your video notes that there are around 100 Confederate monuments in Mississippi. How many monuments appear in the video, and how did you choose the ones that appeared? There are 42 in the film, and according to my research, which I did mainly with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the internet, there are over 150 memorials of some kind to the confederacy (in Mississippi). That’s counting the ones in the Vicksburg Military Park,
Tell me about the writing of the letter that’s read to the statues throughout the film. I wrote it, but I was working on another film—which I’m still working on—which is about Mississippi history. Right when the Civil Rights Museum opened (in Jackson), I started going because I was having a problem finding research materials on Mississippi civil-rights history, so the museum was a dream come true. There’s so much information there. I took a pencil and pad after the first time I went because it was overload. So I went a dozen different times, and I did a section at a time. I wrote words that I saw and tried to trace the chronological story of Mississippi—not just civil-rights history, but the history of the whole state. The idea of me talking to the statues was an old idea of mine—for someone to notice the statue and start talking to it. I took all my notes from the museum, and I wrote that letter. Everything in it came from the Civil Rights Museum. I’m a descendant of at least five Confederate soldiers, and I wrote a letter to them, to their ghosts, to their effect on me. It’s still a literal letter to these Confederate soldiers: You did what you thought was right at the time, but it’s over. Go home. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to people’s ancestors, but still—they fought to maintain the slave economy, so I wanted to be firm. It’s almost like the statues are on trial. From that letter, “You are a traitor and unAmerican” was the only line not delivered in English. What’s the significance of that? I wanted another language (in the video) be-
