A community screening of 'Silver Dollar Road'

Description

Please join a community screening and panel discussion of Silver Dollar Road followed by an hors d'oeuvres and cocktails reception with director Raoul Peck.

From Academy-Award Nominee Raoul Peck, Silver Dollar Road follows the story of the Reels family as told by the matriarch Mamie Reels Ellison and her niece Kim Renee Duhon, two fierce and clear-eyed women fighting to valiantly safeguard their ancestors' land and their brothers and uncles Melvin and Licurtis, who were wrongfully imprisoned for eight years, the longest sentence for civil contempt in North Carolina history. The acclaimed documentary, based on a 2019 ProPublica article, reveals one family's experience of fighting predatory real estate developers who work in blatant and subtle ways to strip Black families of inherited property. The film demonstrates how the legal system has been exploited to keep Black land ownership fragile and the racial wealth gap growing. Peck, who previously directed I Am Not Your Negro, tells a global story of land rights as human rights, giving voice to people who face displacement from their ancestral home.

Following the film, there will be a panel with:

• Raoul Peck, director, Silver Dollar Road and Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro
• Lizzie Presser, journalist, ProPublica
• Marcus A.R. Childress, former investigative counsel to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol and partner, Jenner & Block

These distinguished panelists will discuss how the case of the Reels family in North Carolina illustrates a national problem at the intersection of heirs' property law, structural discrimination, and barriers to intergenerational wealth.

This screening was made possible thanks to the Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs Graduate Film and Media Program, as part of the effort to bring award-winning filmmakers, and "Stories that Matter" — new works that challenge and engage across scientific, social, and/or cultural themes — to Johns Hopkins and our surrounding communities.