At Choctaw Hall, McCartney tells guests how the tradition she’s a part of got started: the town, made wealthy by cotton, suffered a boll-weevil infestation in the early nineteen-hundreds and gradually fell on hard times. Seeing venerable houses in disrepair, a pair of women’s volunteer groups founded in the late twenties—the Natchez Garden Club and the Pilgrimage Garden Club—launched the preservation mission and inaugurated the tours. Collins, who goes by the nickname of Rev, expressly states that his program is to “violate some Southern-pride narratives with truths and facts.” On his tours, he says, “You can’t talk about cotton without talking about slaves.” At one point in the film, McCartney, who has just got divorced and can no longer afford to volunteer as a guide, joins one of Rev’s tours and hears him talk about Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and ongoing forms of white supremacy. “He said some things that made me think about it a little bit differently,” she says.