The dispossession of Black land is a real and serious
issue, and a new film tackles the issue head
on by examining the struggles of a Black North
Carolina family to reclaim their land.
The film, “Silver
Dollar Road” hit theaters
Friday and on Amazon Prime on Oct. 20.
Coming to us from award-winning Haitian
filmmaker Raoul Peck (“I
Am Not Your Negro” and “Exterminate
All the Brutes”), the movie is
based on the 2019 ProPublica story of the Reels family siblings
Mamie, Melvin and Licurtis. The film takes its
name from the road that borders the Reels
property.
Only a generation from enslavement, the Reels’
great-grandfather Elijah bought 65 acres of
land in Carteret, N.C. The family would make a
living farming and fishing, and create the
only beach for Black people in the county.
In the 1970s, the Reels’ grandfather,
Mitchell, died without a will, with the heirs
each inheriting an interest in the property in
what is known as heirs’
property. “Whatever you do,” Mitchell told his
family the night he died, “don’t let the white
man have the land.” Mamie, Melvin and Licurtis
would learn that an estranged uncle took
advantage of heirs’ property and sold the land
— in secret and without consent — to a white
developer. It is common among families who own
communal land through heirs’ property for
developers to entice
relatives to sell their share, opening the
door for developers to auction off all the
land at a profit.
Melvin and Licurtis refused to leave the land and were
sent to jail for eight years for
trespassing.
Following the Civil War, Black people
bought so much land that by 1910 they had
owned 15
million acres or 23,000 square miles. Before the
start of the 21st century, that number had
dwindled to around 2.3 million acres due to Ku
Klux Klan’s domestic terrorism and lynching,
intimidation, deceptive practices and
government action. Although heirs’ property is
associated with land loss for Black families,
it is also an issue for Latinx, Indigenous and
low-income Appalachian white people.
In recent years, the issue of Black land
theft has received greater attention. For
example, in 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom
restored Bruce’s
Beach, Southern California beachfront land, to
a Black family forced off the property a
century ago. Back then, the Manhattan Beach
City Council seized the land by eminent domain
and condemned
the neighborhood after Klan harassment and attempted
arson from white neighbors.
Recently, on Indigenous People’s Day, I had the chance to
speak with director, writer and producer Raoul
Peck about “Silver Dollar Road” and the film’s
larger significance. The story has been
edited for clarity and brevity.
David A Love: First, I think it’s appropriate that
we’re speaking on Indigenous People’s Day,
considering the importance of land. And I’m
curious to know how you decided to take on
this project.
Raoul Peck: Well, the project was brought to me by
Amazon, Juvee Productions and ProPublica, of
course. They were already on it for at least
two or three years, and they asked me to
become the producer of the project. And after
reading, seeing the material, I thought it was
an extraordinary story — and that goes beyond
the usual documentary on family drama or Black
victimization.
I saw the potentiality of the story to become much more
than that and also triggered the kind of anger
that you felt, but also the willingness to go
further than that, because the problem is
national and it touches the core of what this
country is.
That’s good that you mentioned the — you
know, I don’t know if we should call it a
celebration of this day today. My precedent
film, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” it’s exactly the
core story that we see the Reels family is
going through is that we are in a country
that started in two major original sins,
which is stealing the land of people, by the
way, who never said they owned that land.
They always said they are the purveyor of
that land, they are the ones taking care of
that land, but … the concept of private
property did not exist. It’s a European
concept that came with the invaders.
And then … once you have land as
commodity, so you can have humans as well as
commodity, and they use those human beings to
farm the land, to work on the land, to produce
riches, to produce wealth and economic growth.
And the same people who were instrumental in
that did not profit at all off that wealth. In
fact, they were even discriminated willingly.
Because if you take all the laws that have
been created since — you know, let’s forget
before slavery, but after slavery, Homestead
Acts, all of them — they deprive minorities
to have access of that land, although they all
knew without access to land, you cannot
survive. You don’t have the means to sustain
yourself, let alone build some sort of stable
situation, economic situation.
So, all this is structural, and it was structural from the
beginning. And that’s what I hope people will
get from that particular story.
David A Love: What really strikes me about this
narrative is how it’s bringing together the
past, present and future in terms of the role
of land and land theft because of race. And
now it seems that this narrative resonates and
is important right now in America in 2023. I’m
curious to know if there was anything that
surprised you about any of this or anything
that would surprise the audience about — the
story of land dispossession.
Raoul Peck: Well, surprised me? No, because I’ve been
working all my life on those issues. But what
is surprising is that how simple the core
story is, like I just told you about, but that
it’s absolutely not in in the head of people
nowadays.
You still have people who think that this nation was built
out of nothing, that there was nobody on that
land and that they had the privilege to own
that land, and that out of that privilege,
they built everything by themselves. You have
to understand that’s the dominant ideology
today, and it’s even grown despite — Mamie in
the film says, “I don’t believe anything
changed in those 60 years.” And somehow, she’s
right.
There has been evolution, of course, I would never say
that. But from their point of view, where did
we become better? Why did it become better for
all those families who have thousands and
thousands of people in jail? How did it become
better when it’s more and more difficult for
Black families to find schools where their
children can really learn the same way
privileged children can learn? So those issues
are becoming worse, not better. And you have
to see it from the point of view of those
people who are suffering under them.
The core issue brings you all the time to land, that those
people were deprived of owning land. And when
they did, when they bought swamp land and
farmed them, made them richer, there was
violence to make them leave that land. It was
not like, “Oh, let’s buy your land.” No, it
was violence, the same kind of violence you
still see today in the way the police, by
example, treat a young Black man or a young
Black person. It’s ingrained in the system.
People forget that the first corps of the army, their main
duty was to chase and kill Indigenous people
and reclaim runaways enslaved. That was their
purpose, because there were no internal
enemies, you know. That’s why that corps was
created. So, you can imagine that it’s not
like it’s 500 years back. It’s like 200 years,
you know, it’s like yesterday. The ancestors
of the Reels family were enslaved. The end of
the Civil War, they were freed and then they
bought land. That’s 160 years ago. So, it’s
not a faraway story, it’s what we are living
still today. But we lack the connections,
because everything has been made so that it
stays a blur.
So, to respond to your question, I’m
mostly amazed that people don’t get the
clarity of this historical string. And by the
way, that’s why I did “Exterminate All the
Brutes.” It was to go at
the core of the whole story. And if you
can’t understand that core, you will never
understand any problems you have today.
David A Love: Yes, definitely. it’s interesting that.
Black people are always told to pull
themselves up by their bootstraps. And yet
when they do …
Raoul Peck: Which is an absurdity physically!
David A Love: It definitely is, most certainly! What
struck me was the ongoing theme of
exploitation, race and power. Obviously, Black
people are no strangers to this. But just
looking at all the components in this film,
looking at the legal system, the decks being
stacked against Black people, the lawyers
preying on the family. Eight years in jail.
I think the one thing that stuck out in my mind was when
the mother said, and I’m paraphrasing: “They
do what they do. They’re lying. They’re
stealing. They’re Ku Klux Klanning.” I was
wondering if you could speak to that — this
role of the exploitation, the racial
exploitation of all of this.
Raoul Peck: Well, the thing is that it’s very mixed,
because that’s also the absurdity of not
understanding the reality of history.
You can talk about slavery, enslavement, etc., but on the
plantation, besides the violence and the
abuse, there were all sorts of different human
relationships. You know, all races all mixed,
the same way when you see the Reels family
party. There are a lot of mixed-race children
there. There are white women, white men, even
though there is the races. So, judging
everything through only the racist gaze, you
will not understand the real complexity of
real life on the ground. One level is history,
it’s politics, it’s laws, etc., but human
connection, human relationships are much more
complicated. And if you only use the glasses
of racism, you won’t understand everything.
Yes, we are all as Black people submitted to some sort of
racism every day, whether you have money or
you don’t have money. Still, but it doesn’t
erase the aspect of class. My interest as a
Black worker in a factory cannot be the same
as a billionaire rapper, by example. We don’t
have the same interests, I’m sorry. We tend,
both white and Black, to use that sometimes,
to hide behind that and not touch the core
problem, which is class. It’s a war on
poverty, whether you’re Black or white.
David A Love: I appreciate that you brought up class,
as someone who teaches a course on gender,
race and class in the media. Very much
overlooked. If I may, I just had one more
question for you, which is, do you see your
film playing a role in any way in the
discussion over reparations? I was wondering
how you see this issue of land dispossession
fitting into discussions about reparations, if
it does.
Raoul Peck: I’m very torn with the word reparations
because some people use it as just a payback
issue and as a monetary issue, and sometimes
it lacks the profound sense of what it means.
I come from a country that was independent in 1804. Haiti
was the second — and I should say the first —
democratic republic of the whole continent.
The U.S. says they were the first free
republic. No, because not all human beings
were free on this soil. But in Haiti,
everybody was free, white or Black, and we
welcomed any fugitive who set foot on Haiti,
and they were automatically Haitians. So, I
know from my own history what it means to
fight for your freedom, and not having to beg
for payback.
So, if a discussion about reparations is bigger than just
that, I’m for it. There are so many things
that need to put on the table, including what
I call the two original sins. Who gives you
the authority to be deciding if you’re going
to repair or not? That’s not a rhetorical
discussion, it’s the fact, you know. I want
you to recognize what happened first, before
we can have a discussion. I don’t allow you to
be in a position to accept or not if you’re
going to repair whatever you’ve broken. So, I
hope sometime the discussion would go further
in the details and stick to the real story.
This commentary is also posted on TheGrio.com.
