Film Title: In the Shadow of Ferguson
Director: Mai Nguyen, UNC-Chapel Hill
Producer: Ashley Tindall, Archer Films
Production Company: Archer Films
Film screening Moderator: Mai Nguyen, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Description of Film:St. Louis, Missouri was the backdrop to some of America’s most relevant landmark civil rights cases, including Dred Scott and Shelley v. Kraemer. Today, the civil unrest resulting from the death of Mike Brown Jr. in 2014 and the Jason Stockley acquittal has made the city ground zero for the “New Civil Rights” movement. Once the fourth largest city in the country, St. Louis was the intersection of commerce, trade, and migration. It was considered the “upSouth”—the first stopping point for African-Americans looking for work in industrial Northern cities during the Great Migration. At the turn of the 20th century, it was a bustling city with ragtime music, alcohol, and gambling.
Our story is bookended with two Fergusons, starting with the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling in 1896 that deemed “separate but equal” constitutional, and ending with the recent events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. “In the Shadow of Ferguson” examines the processes that institutionalized racism and inequality, documenting over 100 years of housing and urban policy that have shaped social and spatial segregation in St. Louis city and county.
We conducted research on St. Louis to better understand the human hardships caused by housing law, planning, and policies, including racial zoning, racial covenants, and redlining. We analyzed historic and contemporary texts, pictures, maps, plans, newspaper articles, films and sound recordings. In 2017, we conducted interviews of activists, artists, and residents of Ferguson to better understand contemporary perspectives on the city. The 109-minute film brings together this research through imagery, music, acting, and spoken word.
Although St. Louis is the backdrop for our story, what occurred in St. Louis is not an aberration. Housing and urban policy has shaped segregated spatial patterns in many cities across the U.S.
Runtime: 109 minutes
Trailer: vimeo.com/258516062
