How documentary cinema is reframing the Civil… | Little White Lies

Festivals

How doc­u­men­tary cin­e­ma is refram­ing the Civ­il Rights era

04 Feb 2021

Words by Nick Joyner

Crowd of protestors carrying placards and banners. Person in black robe playing guitar in foreground.
Crowd of protestors carrying placards and banners. Person in black robe playing guitar in foreground.
At this year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, three films broad­ened our under­stand­ing of the fight against racial discrimination.

At this year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val three doc­u­men­taries – Sum­mer of Soul, Rebel Hearts and My Name is Pauli Mur­ray – posed impor­tant ques­tions about racism in the Civ­il Rights era and, luck­i­ly for the audi­ence, each pro­vid­ed clear and con­sid­ered answers. Tak­en togeth­er, these films offer fresh insight into 1960s activism and paint inti­mate por­traits of under-appre­ci­at­ed fig­ures who were active dur­ing this momen­tous peri­od in Amer­i­can history.

This the­mat­ic over­lap comes as no sur­prise, giv­en the renewed pub­lic inter­est in polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries over the past year. Fol­low­ing 2020’s sum­mer protests against police bru­tal­i­ty, Ava DuVernay’s 13th expe­ri­enced a 4,665 per cent increase in view­er­ship on stream­ing ser­vices, and this wave has con­tin­ued into 2021 with recent doc­u­men­taries like MLK/FBI.

Of the three afore­men­tioned Sun­dance docs, Sum­mer of Soul is per­haps the splashiest. Direct­ed by Ahmir Quest­love” Thomp­son, the film resur­faces a trove of footage from the Harlem Cul­tur­al Fes­ti­val, a Black con­cert series held in the sum­mer of 1969. Thomp­son dusts off these pre­cious tapes and tracks down fes­ti­val­go­ers and con­cert organ­is­ers to get a full pic­ture of the occasion.

Smart­ly, the film allows much of the con­cert footage to roll unim­ped­ed, only inter­rupt­ing with polit­i­cal insight from Jesse Jack­son or Al Sharp­ton, or to pro­vide musi­cal con­text for how each genre show­cased at the fes­ti­val – blues, soul, gospel, jazz – spoke to a unique facet of Black Amer­i­can life. Above all, the film is inter­est­ed in how Black music – and the col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence – was an impor­tant polit­i­cal out­let in the 60s, offer­ing a space of com­mis­er­a­tion and organ­is­ing; what one child attendee calls the ulti­mate black barbecue.”

Performer playing keyboard on stage, surrounded by large crowd.

My Name is Pauli Mur­ray (from the direc­tors of 2018’s RBG) pro­vides a sim­i­lar res­ur­rec­tion act, not of cul­tur­al his­to­ry but rather the life­work of a Black fire­brand who remod­elled the legal archi­tec­ture of the US. A priest, poet, lawyer, pro­fes­sor, and friend of Eleanor Roo­sevelt, they (many schol­ars argue that Mur­ray prob­a­bly pre­ferred they/​them pro­nouns) par­tic­i­pat­ed in an act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence 15 years before Rosa Parks, and suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grat­ed a seg­re­gat­ed restau­rant near­ly 17 years before the famed Greens­boro sit-ins.

But these two major actions were mere rip­ples com­pared to the legal schol­ar­ship that Mur­ray under­took. Their sem­i­nal law school paper decry­ing the idea of sep­a­rate but equal” sys­tems direct­ly influ­enced Thur­good Marshall’s log­ic in the land­mark Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion case, and one of Pauli’s pre­vi­ous cas­es formed a prece­dent that would help Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg pro­hib­it dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis on sex.

From the ear­ly 30s onward, Mur­ray lived as a Black non­bi­na­ry per­son, a fact that might have con­tributed to their rel­a­tive invis­i­bil­i­ty with­in the fem­i­nist and Civ­il Rights move­ments. As many of the queer activists and legal schol­ars in the film explain, Murray’s life and per­son­al writ­ings were them­selves ground­break­ing, offer­ing a rare record of the life of a gen­der-non­con­form­ing per­son in the ear­ly 20th century.

A man in a blue jacket with glasses smiling whilst writing at a desk surrounded by bookshelves.

The third film, Rebel Hearts, cen­tres on sis­ters of the Immac­u­late Heart of Saint Mary order in Los Ange­les, and how they spent much of the 60s try­ing to become mod­ern.” While the nuns were shed­ding their habits and reform­ing their labour prac­tices, they were also protest­ing for peace and Chi­cano work­ers’ rights. One sis­ter, Patrice Under­wood, even trav­elled to Sel­ma, Alaba­ma, to par­tic­i­pate in Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr’s march there, even though she knew she would face cen­sure from the archbishop.

Though it ini­tial­ly appears that the sis­ters were attempt­ing to mod­ernise the Church, they were in fact fight­ing for their right to be polit­i­cal. At a time when the Church had dis­tanced itself from any strug­gles for jus­tice, the nuns refused to sit on the side­lines, and over 75 per cent of them renounced their vows when the Church tried to sti­fle their nascent activist efforts. On this lev­el, Rebel Hearts offers a fas­ci­nat­ing win­dow into the lives of true polit­i­cal allies, who were rad­i­cal­ly will­ing to risk their liveli­hoods for the sake of justice.

Most fas­ci­nat­ing­ly, these films illus­trate how the spir­it of the 60s reach­es into the present. Though often ignored, the Harlem Cul­tur­al Fes­ti­val lives through its impact on the sound of music today. Just this past year, Murray’s legal prece­dent was used to extend job secu­ri­ty pro­tec­tions to LGBT+ Amer­i­cans. And the for­mer IHS sis­ters are still march­ing on, and one can only won­der if their activism made Pope Fran­cis’ cul­tur­al reforms slight­ly more palat­able. These lega­cies and mem­o­ries live on through these doc­u­men­taries, car­ry­ing lessons we can all learn from.

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