The film ‘Silver Dollar Road’ highlights the theft of Black land

OPINION: Filmmaker Raoul Peck spoke to theGrio about his latest documentary, which tells the story of a Black North Carolina family fighting to get their land back.

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

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” hits 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. 

TheGrio: 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.

TheGrio: 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.

TheGrio: 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!

TheGrio: 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.

TheGrio: 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.

David A. Love is a journalist and commentator who writes investigative stories and op-eds on a variety of issues, including politics, social justice, human rights, race, criminal justice and inequality. Love is also an instructor at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, where he trains students in a social justice journalism lab. In addition to his journalism career, Love has worked as an advocate and leader in the nonprofit sector, served as a legislative aide, and as a law clerk to two federal judges. He holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also completed the Joint Programme in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. His portfolio website is davidalove.com.

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