‘Soul City’ and the Southern Utopia that Never Was
Thomas Healy’s ‘Soul City’ shines a light on the obstacles Black activist Floyd McKissick faced to create an inclusive community in America.
american history
‘Black Against Empire’ Assumes a Central and Critical Spot within the Black Panther Canon
Black Against Empire attempts something beyond the scope of power-to-the-people flashbacks of Afros, dashikis, and raised fists: it takes the Black Panther Party seriously as a political entity taking dead aim on American laws and values.
Amanda Gorman’s History Lesson: An Inaugural Poem in the Shadow of White Supremacy
From the onset, Amanda Gorman's poem, "The Hill We Climb", dissolves the ideology that a presidential inauguration announces the new and deracinates the present from the past.
‘A Peculiar Indifference’ Takes on Violence in Black America
Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie's scrupulous investigation of the impacts of violence on Black Americans, A Peculiar Indifference, shows the damaging effect of widespread suffering and identifies an achievable solution.
Filmmaker Marlon Riggs Knew That Silence = Death
In turning the camera on himself, even in his most vulnerable moments as a sick and dying man, filmmaker and activist Marlon Riggs demonstrated the futility of divorcing the personal from the political. These films are available now on OVID TV.
‘All In: The Fight for Democracy’ Spotlights America’s Current Voting Restrictions as Jim Crow 2.0
Featuring an ebullient and combative Stacey Abrams, All In: The Fight for Democracy shows just how determined anti-democratic forces are to ensure that certain groups don't get access to the voting booth.
‘Lovecraft Country’ Is Heady, Poetic, and Mangled
Laying the everyday experience of Black life in 1950s America against Cthulhuian nightmares, Misha Green and Jordan Peele’s Lovecraft Country suggests intriguing parallels that are often lost in its narrative dead-ends.
John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, and Their Fellow Freedom Riders Are Celebrated in ‘Breach of Peace’
John Lewis and C.T. Vivian were titans of the Civil Rights struggle, but they are far from alone in fighting for change. Eric Etheridge's masterful then-and-now project, Breach of Peace, tells the stories of many of the Freedom Riders.
For Valentine’s Day, the End of Anti-Miscegenation Laws: ‘The Loving Story’
The Loving Story's tale of this Supreme Court victory lays out both its legal and moral import, and then turns back to Richard and Mildred Loving in intimate, evocative images.
‘Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom’ Is as Monumental as the Man It Chronicles
Noted historian David W. Blight offers readers the fullest portrait of Frederick Douglass yet in this "biography of a voice".
Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ Postmodernism and Free-Floating Racism
Before terrifying us, Jordan Peele overwhelms with cultural signifiers untethered from their referents in his latest, Us.
