Event Summary:

On August 2nd, we brought Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro back to the Coolidge Corner Theatre to mark James Baldwin’s birthday and the film’s 10th anniversary. After the screening, our Executive Director Raul Fernandez sat down with METCO’s Kandice Sumner and Malcolm Cawthorne for a conversation about integration, education, and whether Baldwin’s words still ring true today. Sumner described METCO as “an answer but not a perfect answer” to the deeper inequities that created it, and Cawthorne challenged the audience to consider what real integration requires beyond placing students in the same schools. We’re hoping to bring back a commemoration of Baldwin each year, giving Brookline a standing invitation to revisit his work.

James Baldwin is one of the most influential figures in the American civil rights movement, Baldwin’s words on race, power, and American identity feel as urgent now as when he first wrote them.  I Am Not Your Negro was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards and won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. 

We were excited to introduce our post-screening panelists:

Dr. Kandice Sumner and Malcolm Cawthorne