Recommended Documentaries
The Big Payback Documentary: Directed by Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow A Color Farm Production
Rookie Alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons, in Evanston, Illinois, does the impossible and passes the first tax funded reparations bill in history for Black Americans. What follows is grief and debate as she and her community struggle with the burden of instituting repair and restitution for its citizens, while a national racial and social crisis engulfs the country.
Meanwhile, US Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee faces a thirty-year, uphill battle to pass HR40, a national bill to study reparations and make recommendations. Both women are met with racism and historical resistance, as well as assistance from allies and abolitionists within.
Together they must work to force a government to deliver monetary justice and appropriate remedies to Black Americans harmed by centuries of chattle slavery, state sponsored terrorism, systemic injustice and corporate exploitation. Can the long overdue debt ever be addressed, or is it too late for a reparations movement to finally get the big payback?
The Pieces That Remain | Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship | Disney+
The remains of the last slave ship that came to America have been found. In 1860, the schooner Clotilda brought 110 Africans to U.S. shores, decades after it was illegal to import slaves into the country. The wreckage of the boat was discovered in Alabama’s Mobile River. Megan Thompson reports on the search for Clotilda, its history and the significance for the descendants of those slaves.
1619: The First Africans in Virginia and the Making of America (Part 1)
1619: The First Africans in Virginia and the Making of America (Part 1)
A look at the '20 and odd Africans' who landed in what is now Hampton, Va. and their lasting impact on what would become the United States. (Part 1) ww.wusa9.com/1619
Chicago and the largest slavery reparations settlement in US history
Chicago and the largest slavery reparations settlement in US history
The first-ever successful lawsuit brought by a slave was filed by Henrietta Wood.
Slavery by Another Name PBS Documentary
Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality.
Watch online at: https://www.pbs.org/video/slavery-another-name-slavery-video/
Sharecropping in the Post-Civil War South
From NBC News Learn: Even though slavery is abolished after the Civil War, system of share-cropping quickly emerges that keeps Black Americans in a condition much like slavery.
13TH | FULL FEATURE | Netflix
Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay's examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country's history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America. This piercing, Oscar-nominated film won Best Documentary at the Emmys, the BAFTAs and the NAACP Image Awards. US Rating: TV-MA For mature audiences. May not be suitable for ages 17 and under.
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, in WHO WE ARE — A Chronicle of Racism in America, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.
Now available on Netflix.