Anti-Racism: Documentaries
4 Little Girls
– Spike Lee, director
2000
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed by four members of a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated racist group. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, four African-American girls between the ages of 11 and 14 who had been attending the church’s Sunday school, were killed in the blast. Director Spike Lee’s somber 1997 documentary tells the story through new interviews and archival footage.
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
– Henry Louis Gates Jr.
2014
This series chronicles the full sweep of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent right up to today when America remains a nation deeply divided by race. This documentary is also streaming for free at PBS.org
Bill Moyers: Beyond Hate
– Bill Moyers
1991
Recorded in 1991, but still recommended today, Bill Moyers explores the many faces of hate: racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, sectarianism, domestic violence. He talks to those whose lives have been shaped by hate and those who have dedicated their lives to moving beyond it, including Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Václav Havel and others.
The Central Park Five
– Ken Burns
2012
The Central Park Five, a film from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. The film chronicles The Central Park Jogger case, for the first time from the perspective of these five teenagers whose lives were upended by this miscarriage of justice.
Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement
– PBS American Experience
1986
Eyes on the Prize tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Winner of numerous Emmy Awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, an International Documentary Award, and a Television Critics Association Award, Eyes on the Prize is the most critically acclaimed documentary on civil rights in America.
The House I Live In
– Eugene Jarecki & PBS
2013
For the past 40 years, the war on drugs has resulted in more than 45 million arrests, $1 trillion dollars in government spending, and America’s role as the world’s largest jailer. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available than ever. Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In captures heart-wrenching stories of those on the front lines — from the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge — and offers a penetrating look at the profound human rights implications of America’s longest war.
I Am Not Your Negro
– James Baldwin, Raoul Peck
2017
I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words, as read by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to explore and bring a fresh and radical perspective to the current racial narrative in America.
Slavery By Another Name
– Sam Pollard & PBS
2012
Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book by Douglas Blackmon called Slavery by Another Name: the Re-enslavement of Black Americans in America from the Civil War to World War II. The program undertakes a historical approach- beginning during the period of Reconstruction, with the U.S. on the brink of economic failure. Instead of being a period of African American social and political ascendancy, Southern States resorted to underhanded tactics to preserve the status quo – such as debtors’ peonage, convicts leased to private businesses, and forced convict labor in operations run by the state. In the program, Pollard leads the audience on a chronological tour of this disturbing history.
The Two Nations of Black America: Explore the Gaping Chasm Between Upper and Lower Classes of Black America
– Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
2008
Frontline correspondent and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examines the widening gap between the upper and lower classes of black America while exploring just how we could simultaneously have the largest black middle class and largest black underclass in the history of the United States. By intertwining his own life story against that of young African Americans coming of age in the early 21st Century, Gates compares the choices that he was faced with as a young man against the choices that the youth of today are faced with.
White Like Me
– Tim Wise
2013
Based on the book of the same name, in this 68-minute anti-racist educator Tim Wise focuses on the concept of white privilege and provides a necessary history lesson for whites on how race-based entitlement programs built the American middle class.
Whose Streets?
– Directed by Sabaah Folayan & Damon Davis
2017
Told by the activists and leaders who live and breathe this movement for justice, an unflinching look at the Ferguson uprising. When unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street for hours, it marks a breaking point for the residents of St. Louis, Missouri. Grief, long-standing racial tensions and renewed anger bring residents together to hold vigil and protest this latest tragedy. Empowered parents, artists, and teachers from around the country come together as freedom fighters. As the National Guard descends on Ferguson with military grade weaponry, these young community members become the torchbearers of a new resistance.