Racial Justice: Additional Resources

With the nation engaged in a prolonged confrontation about the history of systemic racism and anti-racist books selling out of bookstores, many filmmakers and distributors are making movies and TV series about black Americans free to watch. Some are hard-hitting documentaries about police brutality and some are simply overlooked narratives by black filmmakers, but they’re all important, and in many cases, essential. Here are some of the best.

On March 16, 1968, James Baldwin walked to the podium at a fund-raiser, at Anaheim’s Disneyland Hotel, to introduce Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Baldwin had recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York, after Columbia Pictures had bought the rights to Alex Haley’s “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and asked Baldwin to write the script. Though eager, he had ended up fighting desperately to bring his story of Malcolm to the screen. Baldwin wanted Billy Dee Williams to play the lead, but the studio had other actors in mind. There were even rumors that someone had suggested a darkened Charlton Heston.

Corporations, newsrooms, and political institutions have faced public pressure to denounce and combat racism as activists nationwide have pushed for police reform. However, there is an institution guilty of perpetuating racial inequality that we have yet to scrutinize: American law schools.

Police departments across the nation are implementing policies that would require officers to intervene when fellow officers use excessive force. Minneapolis has such a policy, yet it was not enough to spur Derek Chauvin’s colleagues to intercede to save George Floyd’s life.