Some things to watch that shed much light on why we're not yet better than we were
I am taking a bit of a hiatus for a few weeks to recover from surviving the attempted murder of me by my very own gallbladder. I say this in jest, but if you read my last post, you will understand that it really felt like that little f'er really did want to kill me.
So, I thought perhaps I would just start watching movies and documentaries that would relate to the research I've been doing on Robert Jefferson, people involved with Eleutherian College, and the erased Black community and its leaders in Indianapolis.
Yesterday, I chose to watch a movie I've seen before: "The Help," starring Viola Davis, Olivia Spencer (two of my favorite actors of all time) and Emma Stone, whose best movie ever, besides this one, was "Crazy Stupid Love."
Today, though, I went to Netflix and checked out their documentaries. I found this one and almost didn't watch it because it's almost 2 hours long. But, I went for it anyway, and I was hooked. Immediately.
So, I'm promoting this to you, my readers and followers, because it is an excellent tutorial on what the institution of slavery in America really WAS, how it was supported by our federal and state governments, and proof that the Civil War was, in fact, all about keeping the institution of slavery alive and well in the South.
The title of the documentary is "Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America." The speaker and producer is Jeffrey Robinson, who is a former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a poignant film that was not just a lesson in American history and our deep roots in enslaving Africans and their African-American descendants. It's blunt. It's serious. But it is also a personal trip back to Memphis, Tennessee, Robinson's boyhood home where he grew up and was not even a teenager when Martin Luther King was slain at the Lorraine Motel in that city in 1968.
Here is a link to the project's website. To watch the film, though, go first to Netflix while it is still available. Or buy it at this site. It's worth the money. So much worth the money.