Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1970 • United States

Director Lionel Rogosin’s fourth feature is a unique oral history that uses song and bittersweet stories to illustrate the difficulties of Black people living in 1970s America. The extraordinary cast—including Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, attorney and feminist activist Florynce “Flo” Kennedy, musicians Jim Collier, Wende Smith, Larry Johnson, and Reverend Gary Davis—tell stories of heartbreak and despair while their songs blow the roof off the rafters. A deeply humanist film, BLACK ROOTS combines tales of oppression with gorgeous images of the faces of Black men, women, and children.