Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Who gets to tell the story of Black American history? If our stories are told by Black people at all, the dominant voices have historically been Black men. The Netflix documentary based on the Ibram X. Kendi book of the same name, “Stamped from the Beginning,” turns that reality on its head.
Other than Kendi, who executive produced the documentary of his book alongside TV legend Mara Brock Akil, the film, directed by Roger Ross Williams, features only Black women scholars and activists — across generations, sexualities and queerness — to tell the story of our people. Featuring the legend Angela Davis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Jennifer L. Morgan and Raquel Willis, among other Black women commentators, “Stamped” makes its mark by not only centering Black women commentators but centering Black women’s stories to paint the picture of American Blackness.
“Stamped” tells the story of Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to publish a book of poetry in the Americas. Using gorgeous animation, “Stamped” re-enacts the formerly enslaved 18th-century poet’s experience of being called before a group of white elite men in Boston who subjected her to their investigation to determine whether she had actually written her poems. “Every Black woman has a Phillis Wheatley moment,” where they must prove their worth and qualifications to white men and reinforce the idea that white men have the right to determine Black worth.
“Stamped” distinctly draws the line from Wheatley to Anita Hill testifying at Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
The documentary also centers the story of Harriet…
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