Against All Odds Film

SCPL is pleased to partner with Santa Cruz Black on their 2024 Santa Cruz Black Film Series to provide additional opportunities to watch and discuss these important films.

B.L.A.C.K. On Screen is a five-documentary film series focusing on the themes behind our acronym BLACK: Building Legacies of Access in Communities of Kinship.

Through June, screenings will be the 3rd Tuesday at the Resource Center for Nonviolence and the 3rd Wednesday of the month at the Capitola Branch Library. Doors open at 6:00, screenings begin at 6:30. Registration/RSVP is not required, but recommended to help us plan. RSVP for the Tuesday screening at the Resource Center for Noviolence HERE. Or register for the Wednesday Capitola screening below.

Against All Odds: The Fight for The Black Middle Class is April’s film. Watch the trailer here.

Each screening will be followed by a discussion and/or Q&A. Some of the filmmakers will be participating. Stay tuned!

ABOUT THE FILM

New York Times Journalist Bob Herbert narrates this documentary about the extraordinary difficulty African-Americans have faced in their efforts to establish and maintain a middle class standard of living. The film will surprise a lot of people. The black middle class has never been as large or as robust as most Americans – including most black Americans – have wanted to believe. Nearly 40 percent of all black children are poor. For every dollar of wealth in the hands of the average white family, the typical black family has only a little more than a nickel. And the devastating effects of the Great Recession and housing foreclosure crisis, which hit blacks much harder than whites, left the black middle class virtually on life support. With a compelling narrative, dramatic historical footage and a series of deeply personal interviews, Bob Herbert explains why this disturbing and often tragic state of affairs exists a century and a half after slavery and a half-century after the heyday of the civil rights movement.

The series continues with:

May 22 – The Taking of Harris Neck: 80 years of Injustice for the Gullah People. The stunning marshlands of Harris Neck, Georgia have a tragic history. In 1942, the US government took 2687 acres of land inhabited by descendants of freed slaves to build an airbase. The government promised to give the land back after the war. Now 80 years later the community is still fighting to get their land back. The Taking of Harris Neck tells a story of trauma and racism – and the perseverance to overcome against all odds.

June 19 – Descendant. Follows descendants of the survivors from the Clotilda, the last ship that carried enslaved Africans to the United States, as they reclaim their story.