This community and the surrounding area around the southern shores of Lake Okeechobee, Florida, has a rich history, but the people of Pahokee’s past has often been skipped over, even by those who live there.
Ira McKinley, whose family hails from Pahokee, is a formerly incarcerated activist-turned-filmmaker who first connected with filmmaker Bhawin Suchak for the powerful, personal film The Throwaways, in Albany, New York. Ira reached out to Suchak—who runs an organization called Youth FX—asking for help and technical advice. “People heard my cry and instead of me doing something detrimental and not productive, I got together with Bhawin and we used his people, his young people, to help produce it,” McKinley told us. Having learned from that collaboration, they’ve followed up with a doc that also has deeply personal meaning to Ira. Outta the Muck is about his family in Pahokee and Black achievement in an area beset by hurricane disasters, poverty, and personal trauma.
McKinley and Suchak spoke over Zoom to tell us why this story has resonance for Americans far beyond “the Muck.”
When Outta the Muck Was First Conceived
Bhawin: We thought it was going to be more of an ESPN 30 for 30-type football story, but then realized that narrative has been done before. What was really powerful was you have a family in a community where everyone wants to leave and get out, and yet they are the ones holding it down, maintaining the histories, the legacy, the community connections with the cookouts, and with Alvin being a football coach—him just really providing so much grounding and love to these young men.
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The Meaning of “The Muck”
Ira: “The muck” has always been about survival. To me it was the Garden of Eden. Even though the people didn’t have money, they have food and sources to eat so why do I need money? Then they had an AIDS epidemic. They had a crack epidemic. They were selling drugs. That’s South Florida, bro. But there was money coming through there, and then migrant workers were no longer as involved because [farms] went from using labor to using machines. That’s why the town went down.
But they’re still trying to survive. That’s what we’re trying to explain in the film. Before the machines came, you had people cutting the [sugar] cane. First, it was African Americans, then Jamaicans, Haitians, and now there’s a bigger Mexican population in the area because those are the ones [working] in the field.
And What It Means to Go “Outta the Muck”
Bhawin: That became the core element, even in playing the title, “Outta the Muck,” as a double meaning. You came out of the muck, and the level of pride and resilience and fortitude that [was] built in those people who suffered all these different tragedies, but still are so proud and joyous, and have so much collaboration in just the most basic survival skills of going fishing and hunting and sharing resources. You’ll see people sharing their catch, or sharing the rabbits and the fruits and vegetables.
“You haven’t seen the stories of the people that remain, you see stories of people that leave.”
It was a counter-narrative to all these films about rural communities where people always want to get out. But then the question becomes, “Who stays, and maintains those family histories?” Like Ira says in the opening of the film, “I had to tell this story because if I don’t, it’s going to disappear.” An important part of this film is the spirit going through that town, about connecting to the history and the ancestors.
I was interested in doing a film that wasn’t just about a social issue from a more traditional standpoint, but about showing you something you may have never seen before when it comes to a community like Pahokee. You haven’t seen the stories of the people that remain, you see stories of people that leave.
![Willie Dean and his Family, Pahokee. [Photos by Maya Suchak]](https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/outtathemuck-williedean-family-cropped.jpg)
What Bhawin’s Outsider Perspective Brought
Bhawin: Ira gave me the book Muck City [Winning and Losing in Football’s Forgotten Town]. He told me about his family’s history, the hurricanes, Zora Neale Hurston [who wrote her important novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in nearby Belle Glade]—all of it—and I said, “This is an incredible story.” It was going down [to Pahokee] and meeting Ira’s family that sold me. His family’s incredible. Once I got down there, I started to build that relationship with the family and get a sense of what the community stories were and some of the history. I didn’t want to just go in there and start filming. This is not my place as an outsider. I wanted to make sure I had people’s trust and a level of understanding of what we were trying to do.
What Compelled Ira to Go Back to His Pahokee Family
Ira: When I first came down there before Bhawin did, I had a chance to tour it and reconnect because I hadn’t been there for 35 years. I went and researched. I spent some weeks with the fam.
The first year we really filmed we had to do a GoFundMe. We had to raise like $10,000 and Bhawin’s parents helped put money in. But we had a season [where] we went in before we even got really big funding. We filmed [Pahokee High’s football team] during their undefeated season and that’s what really connected us to the people. We didn’t know they were going to win.
Bhawin: We had to share our air miles, and my sister works for Enterprise, and Bridgett cooked food for us, and we really cobbled it together: the GoFundMe, plus Sam [Pollard] gave us some money, and that was it. And we just had to figure it out.
Ira: Stories have been told [about Pahokee] throughout [its] 100 years of history, with Hurston, and Harvest of Shame. That’s when my family came up north [as migrant farmworkers]. So I never actually lived in Pahokee. I left Florida in ’79 and ’80 and went back in 2015. I used to go there two times a year but never lived in that type of setting. When we’d be filming, things would come back to me with déjà vu about a place.
On the (Possibly False) Hopes and Dreams of NFL Football
Ira: Others want to try to play football. But if you don’t play football, what else are you going to do?
There’s more people that don’t play in the NFL and that’s why you see the poverty. That’s why you see all those just trying to bring resources. To me, a lot of the women are doing better because a lot of them are going out and getting educations, Bridgett is getting an RN [registered nursing] degree. She is the “mother” to many people there.
We tried to tell the stories of Alvin and some NFL players as family-oriented. But we also see how people have no hope. There’s got to be more hope for the youth and others than playing football. Everybody can’t be a football player. There’s people that have other talents, but the focus is on the football. The reason why they go catch rabbits is to help the family eat. All the kids are doing is trying to help the family eat.
Men and “Toxic Masculinity” and the Positive Role Football Plays
Bhawin: I work with young people across different genders, but for the young men I work with, one of the things they’re craving is people in their lives to hold them accountable in a way also backed by care and love, and a level of grace. Allowing them to grow into who they are and not judge them, and not demonize them. That’s something I really admired about Alvin while we’re filming that you don’t see a lot.
One story unfortunately we had to cut was about a young man they call “B Man.” You see him in the film but his story goes really deep: he was 14 and got arrested for armed robbery. Alvin took him under his wing and mentored him, gave him a shot at being a football player. But more importantly, taught him about being a man, being accountable, and doing it with love. He’s in one of the closing scenes, he’s got a baby and a job and lives down there still. But Alvin did that with so much care for these young men, not judging them and not casting them away.
People would ask, “Oh, it’s football—aren’t you talking about how dangerous it is?” That’s part of it, but I want to show there’s also a level of love and community and camaraderie here that is so critical to the life of these young men. Without that, they may not have someone in their life looking out for them.
Football as a place of connection, a place of community, was what I witnessed in Pahokee. The way Alvin mentored and cared about these young men was important to show—that masculinity can be expressed in many different ways. When everyone’s telling each other how much they love each other, they really mean it.
Everyone talks about how Black families are broken and men don’t do anything—and it’s like, “No. That’s just because that’s what you choose to show the public. There’s another side to this story that you were not showing.” All Alvin does is spend time with his kids and his family. He’s just committed to it. He doesn’t go out. He doesn’t party and do any of that stuff. He’s just with his family and those boys on the football team.
How Pahokee Is Doing Now
Ira: Bhawin has another organization he’s running, I’m trying to do my own thing, and we don’t have the resources. It’s still a rich community, but to me, they’re being used and they’ve been used for hundreds of years. We’re coming down using our money to try to build and help them, but they’re so beat up by what’s been going on.
I’m glad my people got me out of there. My mother and father met in Pahokee. That’s why I’m here. If it weren’t for Pahokee, there would be no me. I know that’s my roots. I still got family members—my bloodline starts there. So I want to help, and feel like I’m being shut out even though I have support. These are the barriers we’ve got to break down.
Next Gen of Filmmakers Outta Pahokee?
Ira: We are trying to do a workshop right now for youth media [in Pahokee], and the pushback we get on trying to do it is crazy. All we want to do is come down there, give these people some cameras, donate to a nonprofit. But [there’s] red tape with the political stuff because they don’t want us to bring this down there for people’s benefit.
Bhawin: It’s part of our impact project with Outta the Muck. A lot of young people down there have so much talent, so many ideas and ways they want to express themselves. It seems the only way they can get that energy out is through sports and football.
Alvin would say, when he was going to high school, “We had a theater program. We had a media club. We had all these things they don’t even have anymore.” Part of what Ira and I are trying to do is use my resources through Youth FX, to bring training to young people to be able to tell their own stories without folks like us coming down there.
Additional Recommended Reading + Viewing About the Pahokee Area
Ira McKinley: The book Muck City. That’s what started it all. That was written by Bryan Mealer, 10 years ago. He’s a New York Times reporter.
Bhawin: There’s also documentaries coming out that in some form weave in the story of Zora Neal Hurston, which has really not been told in a broad scope. Executive Producer Sam [Pollard] did a documentary about Hurston [2008’s Zora Neal Hurston: Jump at the Sun for PBS’s American Masters], but there’s other films like After Sherman and Descendant that also talk about this. When Ira was down there doing all that preliminary research, he had already known about this aspect of the town. But even in the community, you couldn’t find people who know who Zora Neal Hurston is, and the kids don’t read her books.
We feel PBS supporting these types of films with this history and community culture from the perspective of the actual people are so important, because not everyone responds to a straight historical documentary.
People [in Pahokee] would say, “How are they not teaching this in our own schools?” They’re like, “Wow, we live in this incredible historic town but some of that is even obscured from us.” That’s what Ira was talking about. He’s going down there trying to help educate people and bring this history to the town, but it’s hard because there’s a lot of structural issues there. They’re so marginalized and underfunded that they don’t have access to that.
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