Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson • 2017 • United States

The films of Kevin Jerome Everson are rigorously crafted, thoughtfully illuminating records of Black American working-class life that bring into focus the often invisible routines of work and labor. In Tonsler Park, Everson trains his black-and-white 16 mm camera on the activity around voting precincts in Charlottesville, Virginia (future site of the infamous white supremacist Unite the Right rally), on Election Day, November 8, 2016—a day that would prove pivotal in the course of American democracy. Capturing, in detail, the vital work of mostly Black civil servants and citizens engaging in the democratic process, Everson pointedly centers their participation in a system that has long sought to disenfranchise them.