A Monthly Dialogue at Medgar Evers College Film & Culture Series
Anyone who would be so bold as to argue that Obama’s presidency has thrust our country into “post-racial society” territory would have had that opinion seriously challenged—if not fully demolished—had they attended the screening of Before They Die: The Road to Reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Survivors at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights on February 24.
Organized by the Medgar Evers College Film & Culture Series, which engages in “viewing and discussing important works of film that speak to or about the experiences of members of the African Diaspora,” the event brought about 300 people to Founders Auditorium and stirred a lively debate.
The Film & Culture Series emerged in 1999 out of the success of the Maafa Film Festival, which has showcased works that address the Black Holocaust from the perspective of filmmakers from around the world. Students, faculty, and staff members at Medgar Evers College wanted to extend the films beyond the festival format and into their community, so
decided to organize monthly screenings of films that address issues similar to the ones taken up by the festival.
Released in 2008, Before They Die, February’s film choice, chronicles the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 and their aftermath (pictured), including the ongoing struggle to obtain recognition of the brutality of the crimes against Tulsa’s black community and reparations on behalf of the remaining survivors.
The massacre in Oklahoma was set into motion when a group of black WWI veterans gathered in front of the city’s courthouse to protest the lynchings that were to take place that day. Angered by their gumption, mobs of white people stormed the neighborhood of Greenwood, an all black part of the city that had earned the name “Black Wall Street” because of the affluence of many of its residents.
Over the course of the next two days, Greenwood remained under attack by angry whites whose violence was supported and assisted by local police forces and the National Guard. At least 300 blacks were killed and approximately 1,000 homes and business establishments were destroyed, crippling the once prosperous neighborhood beyond repair.
According to one of the riot’s survivors who is featured in the film, the political climate in the United States fostered a “culture of silence” that kept the Tulsa Race Riots out of our history books and away from public conversation. It was not until 2004 that some of the riot’s aging survivors began to speak publicly about the brutality they witnessed and endured.
With the help of the civil rights lawyer and scholar Charles Ogletree, these survivors, who were in their 80s and 90s at the time, prepared to bring their stories to the Supreme Court but were turned down before they reached its doors. Soon after, they were given a congressional hearing in which to discuss reparations but to this day there has been little resolution to their struggle.
“Can we, as a community, stand up against injustice?” asked one of the facilitators as the post-film discussion began. The emotions roused by the documentary were palpable as the auditorium’s lights turned on after the film, and the conversation that ensued proved that although the events under consideration took place nearly 90 years ago, an understanding of their relevance to the black community still exists today.
Films previously screened include The Intolerable Burden, about the struggle for equal education in Mississippi after the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a 2002 documentary about the Funk Brothers; All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and Beyond, which combines archival footage with interviews with journalists, radicals, FBI agents and Panthers; The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a 1973 fictional account of a black CIA agent who leaves the agency to become a Freedom Fighter; State of the Union: The Color of Freedom is Green, which examines the impact of corporate oligarchy on the lower class; and Poto Mitan: Haitian Women Pillars of the Global Economy, which tells the stories of female labor organizers in Haiti.
Despite right wing claims that America is no longer racist, and although we have elected an African American man to our highest office, racial minorities are still overrepresented in prisons and underserved in our schools. The need to discuss contemporary racism has not faded and The Medgar Evers College Film & Culture Series is an opportunity for Brooklynites to have such conversations.
The next film in the college’s Film & Culture Series is Teza, which examines displacement and powerlessness in the face of political turmoil in Ethiopia. The screening will take place at 7:00 on Wednesday, March 24 in Founders Auditorium at Medgar Evers College, 1650 Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights. The director of Teza, Haile Gerima, will be present.
