Public Media from Michigan State University

I Am Not Your Negro | Independent Lens

James Baldwin in the crowd. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 28 August 1963, Washington
Courtesy of © Dan Budnik - All Rights Reserved

Mon., Jan. 15, 9pm WKAR-HD 23.1 | Explore James Baldwin’s unfinished book about race in America in this Oscar-nominated documentary.

An Academy Award nominee, the film envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a revolutionary and personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The film is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words, spoken by Samuel L. Jackson, and a 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. 

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