Anti-Racism Resources at Davidson

Arresting Power documents the history of conflict between the Portland police and community members throughout the past fifty years. The film features personal stories of resistance told by victims of police misconduct, the families of people who were killed by police, and members of Portland's reform and abolition movements. Utilizing meditative footage taken at sites of police violence, experimental filmmaking techniques, and archival newsreel, Arresting Power creates a space for understanding the impacts of police violence and imagining a world without police.

Black Lives Matter, and art has a role to play in centering and celebrating the experiences of black people. Until the end of June, we’ve removed the subscription paywall from these films that focus on the dreams, struggles, desires, and art of black characters and real-life subjects. From rediscovered gems by mavericks of early African American cinema like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, to independent-film landmarks by Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, to documentary portraits of black artists by white filmmakers Les Blank and Shirley Clarke, to innovative contemporary work by Khalik Allah, these films offer an invitation to reflect on the resilience and creativity of black individuals and communities in the United States and beyond.

Today, there are more African Americans in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The prison population has exploded by 500% since the end of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. America locks up more of its racial and ethnic minorities than any other country (including South Africa at the height of apartheid). Mass incarceration has emerged as America's new caste system. How could this happen? With Philadelphia as an entry point, Broken on All Sides explores the intersection of race and poverty within the criminal justice system.

This is the story of the Angola Three, three remarkable men - Robert King, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox - who as members of the Black Panther Party have been fighting for justice since the early 1970s. For decades left forgotten in the depths of America's bloodiest prison, between them the Angola Three spent over a Century in solitary, and their struggle became an international scandal.

This documentary closely examines the rust-belt city of Cleveland, one of the most racially divided American cities in the wake of the police murder of Tamir Rice. Dispatches From Cleveland follows ordinary people - long shaken by police misconduct, social discrimination, and poverty - whose love for their home pushes them to work together to bring about real change.

Iris Baez, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, never meant to become an activist. Kadiatou Diallo never meant to leave her home in Africa and move to the U.S., to fight for justice for her son. Doris Busch Boskey, a Jewish woman from the suburbs, never thought she'd become a spokesperson against police brutality. This film profiles three women from very different walks of life who find themselves united to seek justice after their sons are unjustly killed by police. Their stories are tragic, but their courage is transformative.

Eyes on the Prize is an American television series and 14-part documentary about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The documentary originally aired on the PBS network and also aired in the United Kingdom on BBC2. Created and executive-produced by Henry Hampton at Blackside, Inc., the series uses archival footage, stills and interviews of participants and opponents of the movement. The title of the series is derived from the folk song "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," which is used in each episode as the opening theme music.

An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism. In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends--Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Now, in his incendiary new documentary, master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.

LAW & ORDER surveys the wide range of work the police are asked to perform: enforcing the law, maintaining order, and providing general social services. The incidents shown illustrate how training, community expectations, socio-economic status of the subject, the threat of violence, and discretion affect police behavior.

From colonization to gentrification, Not In My Neighbourhood tells the intergenerational stories of the ways in which ordinary citizens respond to the policies, process, and institutions driving contemporary forms of spatial violence and gentrification in Cape Town, New York, and Sao Paulo.

2018 Paul Robeson Award winner at the Newark Black Film Festival, this timely documentary knits the stories of mothers of black and Latin youth murdered by the NYPD into a powerful indictment of racial profiling and police brutality, and places them within a historical context of the roots of racism in the U.S. Some of the victims--Eric Garner, Michael Brown--are now familiar the world over. Others, like Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray, are remembered mostly by family and friends in their New York neighborhoods. Ranging from the routine harassment of minority students in an affluent Brooklyn community to the killings and protests in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri, Profiled bears witness to the racist violence that remains an everyday reality for black and Latin people in this country.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like, a co-production of the IMC and Big Noise Films, weaves the footage of over 100 videographers into a gripping document of what really happened on Seattle's streets. The film cuts through the confusion and tear gas to paint an intimate, passionate portrait of a week that changed the world. With narration by Susan Sarandon and Spearhead's Michael Franti, and with a driving soundtrack including Rage Against the Machine, DJ Shadow, DJ Musaka, and Company of Prophets, This Is What Democracy Looks Like is the first documentary to capture the raw energy of the WTO protests, while clarifying their global and historic significance.

White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today.