While most of the transferred collections contain these types of events, they also contain scenes of working life, domestic life, farming, town scenes, rural life, schools, churches and church activities, recreation, sports, political activities, and parades. The footage comes from white families many of whom employed African-Americans as domestic servants, field hands, and laborers. Woven throughout white, Southern home movie footage is a visual record of African-American life in the South. The following descriptions from twelve of the collections, note scenes of everyday life in the region from 1938 through 1973. Conscious of the tractor's impact on traditional farming practices, Emma Lytle filmed a full crop cycle on Perthshire Plantation over a two year period from 1940 - 1942.
Mules pull the cotton wagons from the fields to the plantation gin for processing.
Lytle's camera recorded the ginning, baling, and loading of cotton onto railroad cars and followed the baled cotton from Mississippi into the textile mills of North Carolina. Kodachrome footage shows a river baptism as well as men, women, and children walking, riding, and driving to the plantation commissary to shop and visit on a Saturday afternoon. Gloria Steinem look alike, Rex float. African American and white laborers work on the crew. The University of Mississippi owns the rights to the films in the Home Movie collections.