JAYFORCE

Historical hooray for the 13th Amendment, right? Because it freed the slaves…right? But wait. Hold the Constitution a minute. What if the passage of the 13th Amendment actually gave way to 150 years of oppression of Black people? That’s what Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13TH” posits. And it’s not ‘what if’ rather ‘what it is.’ Watch the Netflix trailer above. Wow…

The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary “13TH” refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay with bracing lucidity. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis.
– Netflix US & Canada

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