Tomlinson Hill

This documentary would have been a lot more interesting if it actually fit the description provided of the black and white branches of the Tomlinson family discovering each other and their shared roots. Instead, most of the film is about Marlin, Texas. Marlin, like small towns everywhere, is a town of empty storefronts. A decaying town filled with decaying buildings. A good 2/3 of the film is about efforts to bring the people of the community together to save their community. Without much in the way of results.

The portion of the film that deals with Tomlinson family genealogy is interesting and something that deserves greater exposure and conversation in America. White people need to stop being so shocked at the knowledge that they share DNA with black people. While those white landowners were having a grand old time in their local KKK branch they were simultaneously creating new generations of mixed race children. Hence it is not at all unusual to have, in this case, Tomlinson cousins of different races. It is also not unusual that the black cousins have grown up with this knowledge and the accompanying family stories but the white cousins have grown up clueless of the extended family. Even when everyone lives in the same tiny town.

The most noteworthy takeaway from this documentary comes from a historian who notes that whatever else Texas is it is A Southern State. And it is the most un-reconstructed of all the Southern states. And those two sentences explain so much about why Texas is the way it is.