I went to college in the southeast, so this doc focusing on the Homecoming Queen race at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa caught my eye early on. Alabama isn't really known for its progressive race relations attitudes, in case you didn't know (it's the internet, who knows where you're reading this from).

Jessica Joyce Thomas, a black undergrad, decided to take on an entity referred to as The Machine, which consisted of the most powerful, oldest, and white sororities and fraternities, who all compromise on one candidate to support every year, and in fact succeeded in passing voting reforms that made it easier for them to get what they want. Ostensibly this type of organization exists at all major universities in the US.

In particular, the southern universities I'm familiar with that have this type of group have the same organization and aims, which appears to promote keeping everything as crusty and white as possible in terms of not only people in power, but those in merely symbolic positions like Homecoming Queen.

Even though the position means very little to those anointed into them each year compared to others who run that have more passionate, progressive ideas of how to use the position, like Jessica.

In places in Bama Girl, you get to see the real-life people who were born into The Machine by virtue of who their parents are, but resist the trappings of what their great-grandparents decided the future should look like.

Jessica's quest for the crown is undeniably the focus of the film, but there are a few other candidates whose stories get some coverage, and that's what makes this a really compelling look at how primitively-minded many of the college kids put into places of leadership can be even in this enlightened age of information.

Bama Girl does not currently have a distribution deal, but certainly deserves to be seen by more people.