Faculty critique documentary ’I Am Not Your Negro’

Samantha Sheppard, assistant professor of performing and media arts, Dagmawi Woubshet, associate professor of English, Russell Rickford, associate professor of history, and Kevin Gaines, the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Africana Studies and History, participate in a panel discussion at Cornell Cinemas following the Ithaca premiere screening of "I Am Not Your Negro." 'The history of the Negro is the history of America, and it is not a pretty story,' says the late writer James Baldwin in director Raoul Peck's documentary 'I Am Not Your Negro.' The 2016 film is based on Baldwin's recollections of the civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. A friend, intimate and comrade of all three, Baldwin explores race relations in America before, during and after their assassinations. His words connect race relations in the 20th century with those today as depicted by the film. In the words of Samantha Sheppard, assistant professor of performing and media arts, 'he reminds us history is the present.' Following a screening of the movie on Feb. 8 at Cornell Cinema, the first of the 'Skin' series hosted with with the Society for the Humanities, four College of Arts and Sciences professors gave brief talks before engaging in a Q&A with the audience. Pointing the audience's attention to Black History Month, Kevin Gaines, the W.E.B.