Maps The Road From Slavery To Mass Incarceration NPRAva Du. Vernays new film takes its name from the amendment that abolished slavery, but allowed for prisoner servitude. Critic John Powers says 1. U. S. history. TERRY GROSS, HOST This is FRESH AIR. Our critic at large, John Powers, has a review of 1. Ava Du. Vernays new documentary that opened the New York Film Festival and is currently playing in selected theaters and on Netflix. BibMe Free Bibliography Citation Maker MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard. Fiction 100 13Th Edition' title='Fiction 100 13Th Edition' />GoodFellas, Schindlers List, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Raging Bull, Badlands are The Top 100 BasedonaTrueStory Movies of All Time on Flickchart. A colossal book list of historical fiction series including family saga, military, nautical, Ancient world, PreHistoric and assorted locales. Official website for Robert Bidinotto, author of HUNTER A THRILLER. Batman TAS Mad Love Joker Harley 2nd Edition Figure 2Pack DC Collectibles Batman Action Figures Love can make ya do crazy things, especially if youve. In 1. 3th, Du. Vernay, whos best known for directing Selma, explores how the United States became the country with the worlds largest prison population and why a hugely disproportional number of those prisoners are black. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE Like most Americans of every skin color, I wish I no longer had to think about race. Its uncomfortable. Its depressing. Its infuriating. But its also an inescapable fact of our lives. That fact lies at the heart of 1. Ava Du. Vernay, best known for directing Selma, thats now showing in selected theaters and on Netflix. Taking its title from the 1. Amendment to the Constitution, which formally abolished slavery but left a loophole about involuntary servitude for convicted criminals, the film puts forth a searing, opinionated interpretation of American history. It argues that theres a direct line from slavery to segregation to our current era of mass incarceration, in which we have 5 percent of the worlds people but 2. African American. The movie opens at the speedy overview of racial politics in the century after the Civil War, from Jim Crow laws to the creation of myths about African Americans as inveterate criminals in D. W. Griffiths The Birth Of A Nation, a transparently racist, yet cinematically important film that President Woodrow Wilson called, like writing history with lightning. Wielding some lightening of her own, Du. Vernay takes us through such historical touchstones as the lynching of Emmett Till, the civil rights movement, the killing and imprisonment of black power leaders, Richard Nixons racially charged Southern strategy and Ronald Reagan declaring the war on drugs. All this makes 1. In one of the films strongest moments from the early 1. Angela Davis about using violence to achieve social justice. SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, 1. THANGELA DAVIS I grew up in Birmingham, Ala., after the four young girls who were who lived very who lived one of them lived next door to me. I was very good friends with the sister of another one. My sister was very good friends with all three of them. My mother taught one of them in her class. And they went down. And what did they findThey found limbs and heads just thrown all over the place. I remembered from the time, I was very small. I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street, our house shaking. I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times because of the fact that at any moment, someone we might expect to be attacked. I mean, thats why when someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible because what it means is that the person whos asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa. POWERS After the early history lesson, 1. First, the staggering seven fold increase in the number of prisoners in the U. S. created by the war on drugs and by Bill Clintons epic 1. African Americans. Can You Overdose On Smoking Crack Memes'>Can You Overdose On Smoking Crack Memes. In tackling these issues, 1. It clearly aligns itself with Black Lives Matter and with NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. Yet it isnt nakedly partisan. Du. Vernay pointedly goes after both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In fact, some of the films most sensible words come from Newt Gingrich, who adopts the philosopher king persona he prefers when hes not running for something. He says, the objective reality is that virtually no one who is white understands the challenge of being black in America. Hes right. That may partly explain why even as I find large parts of 1. I also find myself resisting its sleekly packaged presentation of the jagged, messy, exhaustingly convoluted complexities of race in America. Radio Shack Logic Probe Manual more. Du. Vernay fills the screen with super brainy talking heads, yet she interweaves these voices so harmoniously that the analysis starts feeling far too neat, far too willing to play down lifes contradictions. For instance, the fact that many ordinary African Americans actually supported Clintons crackdown on crime or that even as the FBI was targeting black leaders in the 6. Still, to say that 1. You should see it, not as a movie that gives you all the answers, but as one that compels you to ask questions about whats going on all around us. James Baldwin once wrote that people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. Du. Vernays film cant free us. But it does make you think about things that, like it or not, are part of whats trapping us. GROSS John Powers is film and TV critic for Vogue and vogue. Monday on FRESH AIR, my guest will be comic Chris Gethard. His new off Broadway show is a comic monologue about subjects he used to be hesitant to deal with on stage depression and suicidal thoughts. He says getting the right meds actually made him funnier. CHRIS GETHARD The whole romanticized sad clown thing, weve got to get rid of that. Thats just getting sick people to voluntarily stay sicker and sadder than they have to be. GROSS Gethard co stars in Mike Birbiglias movie Dont Think Twice about an improv comedy group. I hope youll join us. SOUNDBITE OF MUSICGROSS FRESH AIRs executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our associate producer for online media is Molly Seavy Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Im Terry Gross. Copyright 2. NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb. Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. King Air C90b Manual. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record.