I’m sure Raoul Peck and every one of the Reels family have probably heard certain political commentators proclaim that racism is over in the United States because we elected Obama in 2008. White people loved him so much we wanted to elect him for a third term. Goodbye racism! What shortsighted pundits miss in this statement is the institutional forces that enforce racist behavior still remained despite one US presidential election. The poor Reels family knows this hurt all too well, which documentarian Raoul Peck shows in his harrowing documentary about land battles around Silver Dollar Road in North Carolina.
The Reels family, pre 1970s established in Federal law that they owned the rights to the Silver Dollar Road area in Merrimon North Carolina. They didn’t have any issues with this until the 1970s, when a distant relative sold a piece of the land to some developers that got through the legal system. Matriarch Gertrude was told explicitly by her father to NOT sell Silver Dollar to white people, so she put her life into keeping the land for her family, with her kids Melivn and Licturtis, and her grandkids Mamie and Kim also doing their part to keep their home.
And that, in a nutshell is what Raoul Peck and his epic drone shots try to show in Silver Dollar Road. This is the modern spin on how racism endures. This story doesn’t have an evil white person as the villain. The “bad guys” are a faceless real estate corporation and a corrupt legal system. In this case, the only color Adams Creek Associates (the corporation) see is “green.” Because the Reels family has no money and caters to people who also have no money, they are better served for the economy to be removed so someone with money can take their place. And the legal system does all the enforcement of the faceless corporation: taking more and more draconian measures to clearly send a message to this family to show what will happen if they continue to not sell. The legal and economic complexity faced by the Reels family becomes so big, that more and more of their family members are dragged into the fight. Living your whole life fighting? That’s exhausting, and we can see over time the emotional and physical wear each of the Reels family members goes through just to live on the land they legally bought first over a hundred years ago.
What little hope there is from Silver Dollar Road it comes from the strength of the Reels family. It all starts with Gertrude, a powerhouse presence on Silver Dollar Road who turned their family’s land into a wonderful black vacation destination where you could just enjoy the summer. Melvin and Licurtis reap a lot of those good times, but because of that are the first to be targeted by the justice system, forced to fight their own mini battles. To prevent the family from splitting apart, a quickly aging Gertrude identifies Mamie and eventually Kim as the heirs strong enough to deal with the land rights issue. Watching their rise is a lone bright spot, as you see this legacy of amazing women showing feats of strength for the sake of their family again and again and again. The constant uphill battle means any victories are a big deal, and give the audience this brief serenity and elation to be happy for these wonderful people.
But let’s face it, money vs. no money in the US isn’t a fair fight. The Reels have their priorities straight and are on the right side here, but green is mean when it needs to be, and more attacks from more angles are going to come to push this poor family to the brink. The best way to fight bullsh*t like this though is vigilance, so hopefully enough people see this documentary or read the ProPublica article so the Federal Government maybe takes a closer look into the legal shenanigans going on in North Carolina, and let the Reels family simple go home and live in peace.