Stamped from the Beginning, dir. Roger Ross Williams (New York: One Story Up, 2023) is a solid documentary adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi’s award-winning book of the same title. Williams recognizes well that documentary filmmaking is a different medium from the written word, and the film is a survey of Kendi’s key insights while simultaneously moving beyond them.
While Kendi’s book is a chronological examination of anti-black racism in the United States and attempts made by black Americans to fight against white supremacy, Williams’s film is thematic, although it pushes along chronological lines. The film covers core moments in the development of anti-black racism including the history of trans-Atlantic slavery, the sexualization of black women, and the wholesale criminalization of African Americans.
While these themes are the overarching categories around which the documentary is organized, the true centerpiece is a set of narratives by historical black women who sought to fight against the suffocating restrictions placed on them by white Americans. Phillis Wheatley was born in West Africa, where she was kidnapped and shipped to British North America as a child. She published a collection of immaculate poetry which challenged the colonial establishment’s understanding of what black people were capable of. She was brought before a tribunal, and a series of investigators argued that her poems were actually written by somebody else. Fortunately, she was vindicated.
The second narrative tells the story of Harriet Jacobs, the first enslaved woman to document her experiences in a memoir (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), which offers explicit details about the sexual violence that her enslaver committed against her. At the time of publication, many–including ostensibly progressive white progressives–believed that it was a fantasy written with rhetorical force. She escaped to freedom after hiding in the attic of her grandmother’s house for seven years.
Finally, the documentary offers Ida B. Wells’s testimony. I think, for most Americans, Ida B. Wells is the most recognizable name, and she was an investigative force. After lynchings surged in the post-reconstruction South, she published a series of pamphlets arguing that against accusations that African Americans being killed were criminals. In fact, they were criminalized in order to ensure the continuing dominance of the Southern white elite.
Each of these stories acts as a hinge to discuss the legacies of anti-black racism as they continue in American culture today. Williams includes archival footage from the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, and numerous cultural artifacts to show that conditions for black Americans have changed little. Just as significantly, each time that African Americans are able to push for racial equality, white backlash hits them just as hard.
Throughout the documentary, there are also interviews with prominent professors, giving additional authority to his viewpoint. In fact, the rhetorical use of logos, ethos, and pathos are balanced and effective: Aristotle himself would be impressed.
There is little in this documentary that can seriously be disputed–all of the evidence is sound. When I was in grad school, I spent a year comprehensively examining the American historical literature, and this documentary very much reflects my own understanding of the field.
While the Black Lives Matter movement brought increasing attention to the struggle for black liberation, it is striking that there has been an enormous retreat of progressive aims across the board. It is unclear if white Americans are familiar with the extent of anti-black racism and merely disavow it or if they truly are not aware of the way that white supremacy defines their lives. I’m inclined to say the former, but–if so–this documentary has little chance of changing minds. Such circumstances are alarming, and I hope that we can continue doing what is necessary to ensure equality for black people.
Whether the documentary is effective at changing minds or not, I still urge any reader to view it, as it is a powerful examination of the history of racism in the United States.
