Black Lives Documentary Series
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Black Lives: Struggle. Still dreaming of racial justice in St. Louis' black neighbourhoods
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Black Lives: Liberty Maze. Inside America’s homeless epidemic
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Black Lives: Hope . Gospel or gangsta rap, same message, different vibes
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Black Lives: Truths. Residential segregation legacy keeps America divided
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Black Lives: Agents of Change. Failing schools versus community education in America
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Black Lives: Illusion. Teenage motherhood, single-parent families, and the child poverty trap
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Black Lives: Addiction. Insiders speak about the murky drug trading world in the US
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Black Lives: Deadlock. Black Lives Matter vs the Ku Klux Klan: Racial tensions spark anger in the USA
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Black Lives: Doom . Choosing between good and bad in black US neighbourhoods
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Black Lives: Trap. Why civil rights aren’t enough to make the American Dream come true
Black Lives: Struggle. Still dreaming of racial justice in St. Louis' black neighbourhoods
Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s death, some American cities are still divided along racial lines. The legacy of legalised segregation persists and shapes urban areas like St. Louis. The African-American population is mostly confined to neighbourhoods with high violent crime rates and low wages.
Episode one follows St. Louis activists who are fighting battles old and new: against inequality, poverty, bias, lack of prospects, police abuse, and extrajudicial killings, all problems the African-American community faces every day. We meet activist rapper, T-Dubb-O, Ferguson protester, Dhoruba Shakur, and local protest organiser, Tory Russell. They all describe the bleak reality of living in black enclaves.
“Most of the people out here are not bad people – they are in bad situation,” say, Rev Kenneth McKoy and priest, Jay Kanzler, who hold weekly 'peace walks' to call for an end to violence in troubled neighbourhoods.
We also hear from Gina Torres, whose son, Isaiah Hammett, was killed in a raid on their home by a SWAT team. Some say the young white man received, “the treatment of black people” and died because he hung around black people.
Black Lives. Struggle; a raw portrayal of life in black communities in the United States.