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Documentaries on Dismantling Racism

Jul 23, 2020

If you’re looking for ways to learn more about racial injustice here are three critically acclaimed documentaries you can stream right now. These documentaries look at the history of racism in America, racial inequality, and the civil rights movement.


John Lewis: Good Trouble
Using interviews and rare archival footage, John Lewis: Good Trouble chronicles Lewis’ 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health-care reform and immigration. Using present-day interviews with Lewis, now 80 years old, Porter explores his childhood experiences, his inspiring family and his fateful meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957. In addition to her interviews with Lewis and his family, Porter’s primarily cinéma verité film also includes interviews with political leaders, Congressional colleagues, and other people who figure prominently in his life.

Directed by Dawn Porter. Produced by Dawn Porter, Erika Alexander, Ben Arnon, Laura Michalchyshyn.
On digital and on-demand.

 

Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws in order to test and challenge a segregated interstate travel system, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

Written, produced, and directed by Stanley Nelson.
Available on Amazon.

 

13th
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.

Directed by Ava DuVernay. Produced by Ava DuVernay, Howard Barish, Spencer Averick.
Available on Netflix and YouTube.

 


Learn more about dismantling racism through the legacies of Rev. C.T. Vivian and Rep. John Lewis, two of America’s civil rights icons.
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