Documentaries About Black Lives That Matter
I proudly have Black family. So here's my bit of history to mark the close of a special month.
Black History is Every Anerican’s History
Hell yeah, Black Lives Matter. Big time. Right now probably more than at any moment since the Civil Rights movement years of the 1950s and ‘60s as racism insidiously resurges in our currently roiling and sometimes boiling nation. Hence revisiting the courageous and determined souls of the movement as well as other African-American lives is wise if not even propitious for the new struggle that’s, tragically, deja vu all over again, in the mangled yet pungent words of Yogi Berra.
There’a an accidental irony in Black History Month being the shortest one of the 12. This missive seeks to extend the celebration.
Brief aside: stressing how Black Lives Matter does not negate other ethnic lives mattering; it’s simply a strong rhetorical response to a genuine societal problem. Of course all lives matter, as the stupidly heartless attempt at a rejoinder to the notion of BLM goes. But at the welcome risk of ticking off right wingers by verging into CRT, African-Americans have continued to get a raw deal in this sometimes great nation (that remains too often not great). And racism still poisons our body politic.
I was born into and grew up through the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, fortunately into a family where prejudices simply did not exist. It was an inspiring time. I thought the movement had achieved enough genuine progress towards an inclusive and diverse society to follow seemed possible. But as recent events have shown, boy was I mistaken.
As resurgent racism taints our republic, it’s valuable for those of us who wish to purge its toxins from public life to continue delving into Black lives that matter. Three recent documentaries show how the accomplishments of significant modern African-Americans helped shift consciousness towards a better and fairer nation when it comes to race in different yet powerful ways.
When I was approaching one year old, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL bus to a white person on her way home from work – a proverbial shot of passive resistance across the bow of segregation that was heard around the world. All that I didn’t yet know about her was what the title of a recent documentary makes plain: “The Rebellious Life Of Mrs. Rosa Parks.”
A civil rights activist since her youth, she married a man also committed to the movement and devoted her life to the struggle. Known as “Mother Parks,” she not just deserved but earned that iconic honorific by far more than her famed act of resistance. The doc superbly informs on the fullness of a Black life that truly mattered, and should impel by example all the rest of us to resist and rebel against the evil of racism whenever and however we can.
On the flip side of the coin is is the doc “Say Hey, Willie Mays!” I took special pleasure in this film as I’ve known its director, Nelson George, since my and his early days as a music journalists, always enjoying the opportunity to chat with him when he was the R&B editor at the music trade Billboard and I would stop into the office as a regular freelancer. His thesis underlying the film is that while Mays was not by any means a civil rights activist, he nonetheless elevated the stature of Blacks in America by being a brilliant baseball player – arguably, the doc asserts, the game’s best all-around player ever. And a man who lived his life with modesty, dignity and class. Plus it’s a pleasure to recall his glories as a player during the times in which I came of age.
In a somewhat similar vein is “Reggie,” about the life of baseball’s Reggie Jackson. As a Yankees fan living in the Big Apple during his salad years as a Bronx Bomber, Jackson could be a bit frustrating at times. He was rightly known as a jumbo hot dog, and earned his nickname Mr. October by resting on his rep in the earlier months of the seasons. But when it came down to the clutch, he’d step up to the actual and metaphorical plate and show his winning stuff.
Sure, Reggie had a hella ego; one local sportswrtiter posited that there wasn’t enough mustard in the Big Apple to cover Reggie’s hotdog. But when he made those stunning hits and plays, all ego was forgiven. At his best on the diamond, he shined with athletic oomph and baseball genius with a topping of balletic grace.
The gratifying aspect to this doc is how Jackson’s life well-lived and played resulted in the sort of personal actualization that should come with maturity in our senior years: the ability to look back on how we lived and see our faults and foibles as well as take pride in what we accomplished. And a look back at Jackson’s story from the October of his years shows what he did to move civil rights forward and upward.
I’m gratified to have had such Black icons’ lives enhance mine, which all three docs even further. And in such dire racial times as now, I hope more notable Black lives will matter enough that they shall help us overcome the current ugliness and ascend as a nation and society to a better, fairer and higher place. Like Reggie leaping to catch a ball….
This post is adapted from my long-running column in The Progressive Populist, sister publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Storm Lake Times, subject of the acclaimed 2021 PBS documentary, “Storm Lake.” Check out the Populist’s range of original and well-chosen Leftist writings from the heartland at www.populist.com, and please consider subscribing to its biweekly print edition.