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Must-Watch Documentaries on American and Global Struggles
By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor, and Melina Paris, Assistant Editor
The past is not always the past. Usually, it is very present, just beneath the surface in a thick layer. Earlier this month, PBS aired a documentary called American Coup, Wilmington 1898, which shows just how close and present our past is.
The documentary is based on David Zucchino’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, in which white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina carried out a massacre and coup d’état.
In a 2020 talk about the massacre, Zucchino asked how more than a hundred years could pass and this event not be talked about.
The story begins when a group of armed men disrupt an election in Wilmington, North Carolina, and slaughtered more than 60 black people. In the months following, 2,000 Black folks fled the city never to return to their homes and businesses, and White supremacists took over a city that once had a thriving black middle class that was active in civic life.
Zucchino called that insurrection America’s first overthrow of a legally elected government. It was not a race riot. It was a coup.
But in recent years, the only coup ever to take place on U.S. soil has been examined in deeper ways, from the state’s own research, The News & Observer’s acknowledgment of its role in fanning the flames in 2006 and a Pulitzer prize-winning book in 2020 by journalist David Zucchino.
Zucchino, a contributor to the New York Times, a national correspondent with the Los Angeles Times, and a bureau chief in Beirut, Nairobi, and Johannesburg for the Philadelphia Inquirer for 20 years, describes this North Carolina history as nearly hiding in plain sight, with the names of coup perpetrators and terrorist attached to college dormitories, football stadiums, and student stores.
“Wilmington 1898: An American Coup,” a documentary co-produced by PBS North Carolina and American Experience, is the latest entry into the examination of the critical event in Wilmington’s history.
The documentary combs through the history via interviews with the descendants of the victims and perpetrators of the coup, such as the descendants of Alex Manly, who led the city’s Black newspaper, and Frank Daniels III, the great-grandson of Josephus Daniels and former publisher of The News & Observer, as well as interviews with scholars and writers about this era.
The documentary deploys rarely viewed photographs and newspaper clippings interspersed with the interviews.
Filmmakers Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen said they were drawn to the story because of their previous work exploring racial terror in the South and the hard history that often gets covered up for generations.
“This didn’t just happen in North Carolina, in terms of racial terror and massacres. This happened all over the south,” Richen told Axios.
“We can grapple with our history,” she added. “Hard history doesn’t have to be about making people feel uncomfortable. It’s about how we grapple with it, and how we move forward and the whole nation could benefit from that.”
This documentary also serves as a reminder that this grand democratic experiment has probably always teetered precariously on the edge of failure.
Visit PBS (https://www.pbsnc.org/watch/american-coup-wilmington-1898/) to see the documentary.
Israelism
The documentary, Israelism, is another timely film one should look for, but this time, on the free television app, Tubi, Google Play, or Prime Video.
Last month the San Pedro Neighbors for Peace and Justice or SPNPJ and Codepink San Pedro collaborated on its second community film screening, this time featuring the documentary Israelism, at Collage. The film focuses on two young American Jews who are raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs and underscores the portrayal of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in American Jewish institutions. The screening was followed by a discussion with a diverse audience, including Jews and Muslims — some who testified to their experiences since Oct 7, 2023. The purpose of the event was to gather in fellowship, to strengthen the call to end the U.S. weapons sales to Israel, and to strengthen local Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions or BDS efforts.
Interviewees in Israelism include Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Jeremy Ben-Ami, and Sami Awad. It is shown from the perspectives of Simone Rimmon Zimmerman (co-founder of IfNotNow and formerly the Jewish outreach coordinator for Sen. Bernie Sanders) and a former Jewish American IDF soldier identified only as “Eitan” The film shows the process by which Zimmerman’s and Eitan’s evolution from their original understanding of Israel, learned through attending their Jewish day and religious schools, summer camp and organized trips. Upon “Birthright Israel” initiation at 17 to 18 years of age, Zimmerman and Eitan, (through his IDF training), come to witness a different reality from what they were taught. As the film highlighted, “Some American Jews who come here say: ‘We came to Israel and we left from Palestine.’”
They were shocked at the reality on the ground, with the wall in Gaza, how Palestinians have to go through countless checkpoints just to get to work, to see how IDF soldiers treat Palestinians, with intimidation and brutality and surveillance. They realized they were not told the truth about Israel’s existence, while they were taught to believe that “the only way Jews can be safe is if Palestinians are not safe.” The award-winning film documents the systematic indoctrination that is applied to grooming young Zionists through the subjects’ perspectives and it unveils the apartheid state the Palestinians are forced to “live” under.
The screening was well attended, bringing a full house and a potluck. SPNPJ and Codpink SP’s first screening featured the award-winning film Where Olive Trees Weep which offers an up-close view into the struggles and resilience of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.
San Pedro Neighbors for Peace and Justice, and Codepink San Pedro have longtime standing in this community educating and activating against war and racism, and for justice and security for all people.. Preceding the event, the group held its weekly vigil for Gaza at 13th and Gaffey street in San Pedro. This vigil has been happening since within a week of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and has continued consistently since then. The first vigil took place at the USS Iowa, where the activist groups called for “hospital ships, not warships.” It was there that the activists made their first contact with the local Palestinians and the larger Middle Eastern community. SPNPJ then decided to restart its weekly peace vigils, this time in particular for Gaza. Since then, the groups have held banner drops at the San Pedro welcome bridge that crosses Gaffey Street, incorporating drone photography and posting on social media about the action.
