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FILM SUMMARY
At the time of his passing in 1987, James Baldwin left behind just 30 pages of an unfinished book project
titled “Remember This House.” It was to be a personal account of the rise and fall of fellow civil rights icons
Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X, each of whom he had come to know personally before
their assassinations. Picking up where Baldwin left off, director Raoul Peck attempts to weave together these
remaining loose narrative threads using only Baldwin’s words, via startlingly clairvoyant video clips of Baldwin in
interviews or lectures, and earthily interpreted readings of Baldwin’s texts by Samuel L. Jackson. The result is an
interpretive essayistic documentary that surveys how the civil rights movement and America’s failures to wholly
embrace it are still frightenly relevant and continue to shape our current times.
James Baldwin has long been an eloquent voice on race relations and the African-American experience,
appearing in panel discussions alongside his more well-known contemporaries throughout the 1960s while
publishing novels, essays, and scripts for the stage until his death in the 1980s. He also wrote a considerable
amount of film criticism, culling from his memories of watching Doris Day and Gary Cooper or the films of Harry
Belafonte and Sidney Poitier to analyze the inequalities depicted and perpetuated in racial representations on
screen. Pulling from Baldwin’s writings, as well as the clips from the movies he wrote about, Peck gives Baldwin
his big-screen due with crystalline lucidity and a deeply emotional sense of cultural purpose.
I Am Not Your Negro
Discussion Guide
Director: Raoul Peck
Year: 2016
Time: 95 min
You might know this director from:
The Young Karl Marx (2017)
Murder in Pacot (2014)
Helpance mortelle (2013)
Moloch Tropical (2009)
Sometimes in April (2005)
Lumumba (2000)
It’s Not About Love (1998)
Chère Catherine (1997)
Haiti – Silence of the Dogs (1994)
The Man on the Shore (1993)
Lumumba, The Death of a Prophet (1990)
Discussion Guide I Am Not Your Negro 1
FILM THEMES
James Baldwin once stated on national television that he was not a
“nigger,” but in fact, he was a man, and if you thought that he was indeed
a “nigger,” that meant that you needed this hateful term and you needed
to figure out why, as the future of the United States was depending on
this very fact. This core idea of racial inequality haunts the entirety of I
AM NOT YOUR NEGRO.
SOCIAL JUSTICE REMAINS TO BE SEEN
Above all else, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is a searing indictment of
America’s failure to rectify its shameful history of racial inequality.
Baldwin’s personal account of the civil rights movement and its trio of
outspoken icons on the vulnerable vanguard reminds us that there is
still much work to be done. As if to hammer home just how little we’ve
moved forward since the violence committed against civil rights activists
throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Peck cuts away from the disturbing
black and white archival footage to recent images of the streets of
Ferguson, Missouri, where riots broke out after the fatal 2014 shooting of
Michael Brown, an African-American man, by a white police officer.
RACIAL REPRESENTATION IN THE MEDIA
Over the course of his lengthy and productive career, Baldwin wrote
a considerable amount of cultural criticism, including many essays on
racial representation in cinema. Peck uses this fact to his advantage
throughout I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, using film clips and Baldwin’s
impassioned writings, the film manages to show just how subtly racial
inequality was ingrained in films from the birth of the movies onwards,
and how they were perceived differently by black and white audiences all
along the way.
PEOPLE ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT
Midway through I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, Baldwin is quoted expressing
just how different Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
were, but in writing about their differences he was really attempting to
express just how similar their beliefs and personal struggles actually
were. These three men gave their very lives fighting for the same exact
thing—the basic civil rights of their fellow man, no matter that they each
went about it in their own, if politically contradicting, way.
THE POWER OF WORDS
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates recently posed the question as to whether
or not James Baldwin was the greatest essayist of all time. Some
of his written work undisputedly stands among the great American
publications, and I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO takes pains to lend Baldwin’s
voice enormous gravity, having his written word read aloud by noneother-than Samuel L. Jackson, while Baldwin himself comes across as
exceptionally eloquent when speaking publicly and on camera. The
film wholly rests upon the power of his words, as the entirety of its
construction is formed from his writings and his on camera appearances.
This is by no means a fault in the film, but its strength.
“People cling
to their hates
so stubbornly
because they
sense once hate
is gone, they will
be forced to deal
with pain.”
– James Baldwin
“A nation that
continues
year after
year to spend
more money
on military
defense than
on programs of
social uplift is
a approaching
spiritual death.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Discussion Guide I Am Not Your Negro 2
FURTHER DISCUSSIONS:
1. How did you first react to the film upon watching it?
2. Were you familiar with James Baldwin’s literary work or civil rights
activism before watching I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO? If so, how?
3. Though I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO takes up the task of adapting
Baldwin’s unfinished work about his fellow civil rights icons, the film
seems to center on Baldwin himself, as if it is a memior. Did this
delicate balance of subject matter work for you?
4. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is an unapologetic and direct title. How did
you react when you first heard the film’s title. Why?
5. Many of Baldwin’s written works, overtly explore gay and bisexual
themes, though I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO completely skirts the fact
that Baldwin himself was a homosexual. Did you take issue with this
fact? Why do you think the filmmaker chose to do this?
6. Within the film, Baldwin’s written word is read and embodied by the
actor Samuel L. Jackson, whose interpretation sounds nothing like
Baldwin himself. How did you feel about this juxtaposition?
7. Of the three men—Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm
X—about whom Baldwin writes, which did you learn about most? Did
you already know a lot about one or more of these men? If so, did
you learn anything new from the film?
8. In comparing archival footage from the 1950s and 1960s with
footage of police violence shot contemporary with the film’s release
some 60 years later, director Raoul Peck seems to argue that the
quality of life for most African Americans has not increased much
since the dawn of the civil rights movement. How do you feel about
this?
9. Structurally, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is an essay film, moving
between archival footage, interviews, and readings of Baldwin’s
writings. Since Baldwin is known as one of America’s greatest
essayists, did you feel this was an appropriate cinematic tribute to
him?
10. What was your greatest takeaway from the film?
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NOTES:
Discussion Guide I Am Not Your Negro 3
FILM FACTS:
WAYS TO INFLUENCE
1. Read James Baldwin’s written works, from his monumental essays like “The Fire Next Time,” to his novels “Go
Tell It on the Mountain.”
2. Join a local social justice organization to help build strong, diverse, sustainable communities.
3. Know your civil rights movement history. There are countless fiction films, documentaries, and books on the
subject that are deserving of your attention.
4. Spread the word on Twitter and Facebook. #BeTheChange you want to see in the world. #IAmNotYourNegro
is now available on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD!
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• I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO had its world premiere
at the Toronto International Film Festival on
September 10, 2016, winning the People’s
Choice Award. It went on to screen as part of
the New York Film Festival, AFI Fest, the Berlin
International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, and many
other prestigious festivals the world over.
• The film was nominated for an Oscar for
Best Documentary Feature, but lost to Ezra
Edelman’s 8-hour epic “O.J.: Made In America.”
However, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO was awarded
the Creative Recognition Award by the
International Documentary Association, as well
as the Amnesty International Award from the
Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, the
Gilda Vieira de Mello Award from the Human
Rights Watch Film Festival, and the Panorama
Audience Award from the Berlin International
Film Festival.
• The three subjects of Baldwin’s unfinished
work “Remember This House” were civil rights
activists Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin
Luther King Jr., each of whom was assassinated.
Evers was killed on June 12, 1963 at his home
in Jackson, Mississippi, at age 37. Malcolm was
killed on February 21, 1965 in Manhattan, New
York, at age 39. King was killed on April 4, 1968 in
Memphis, Tennessee, at age 39.
• James Baldwin’s first novel, “Go Tell It on the
Mountain,” was published by Knopf in 1953. In
1998, the Modern Library ranked it 39th on its list
of the 100 best English-language novels of the
20th century.
• Director Raoul Peck was born in Haiti in 1953.
He eventually moved to the Congo and went to
school in the United States, France, and finally,
Germany, where he earned a degree in film in
1988. From March 1996 to September 1997, he
was Haiti’s Minister of Culture.
• Following Baldwin’s death in 1987, the publishing
company McGraw-Hill sued his estate to recover
the $200,000 advance they had paid him for the
unfinished book “Remember This House,” which I
AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is based upon. The lawsuit
was eventually dropped in 1990.
• By the end of its theatrical run, I AM NOT YOUR
NEGRO had become the greatest documentary
box office hit of 2017, netting over $7 million
in ticket sales. Surpassing “Food Inc.,” the film
became the highest-grossing non-fiction release
to date for its distributor Magnolia Pictures.
Discussion Guide I Am Not Your Negro 4
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We believe a good documentary
is just the beginning…
Influence Film Club is a not-for-profit dedicated to expanding audiences
for documentary films.
In a world of sound-bites, documentaries provide an opportunity
to think, understand, share, and connect with the world.
They are controversial, divisive, fascinating, unexpected, and
surprising. They can be thrillers, dramas, comedies, romance,
tear-jerkers, and horror films.
Documentaries provide the perfect topic for meaningful
conversations. If you want to talk about the things that matter
with people that matter then pick a film, invite your friends, and
watch & discuss together. It’s as easy as that.
—
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SUMMARY OF THE FILM
James Baldwin left behind only 30 pages of an incomplete book project when he died in 1987.
“Remember This House” is the title of the song. It was supposed to be a firsthand account of fellow civil rights leaders’ rise and collapse.
Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X were three people he had met before.
Assassinations were carried out on them. Director Raoul Peck seeks to weave together these disparate elements, picking up where Baldwin left off.
strands of the story using solely Baldwin’s words, via shockingly precognitive video snippets of Baldwin in
Samuel L. Jackson gives interviews or lectures, as well as earthily interpreted readings of Baldwin’s texts. As a result, a
interpretative essayistic documentary that looks at how the civil rights struggle and America’s history have influenced one other.
