I Heard It Through the Grapevine

Disgusted by the level of racism in America, Black author James Baldwin had left the United States for Paris in 1948. But in 1957 he returned to contribute to the Civil Rights movement. As a journalist he reported on historical events such as Martin Luther King’s legendary March on Washington in 1963.

Two decades later, Baldwin revisited those places – among them Selma, Birmingham, and Atlanta – to meet with writer friends and former activists and discuss what been achieved. This travelogue film intersperses these conversations with archive footage of the civil rights struggle and the author’s own reflections.

A sense of intense disappointment pervades the film. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 appeared to be a great leap forward, but, as former activist David J. Dennis points out, the economic situation for African-Americans remained unchanged. Baldwin regards the King monument in Atlanta merely as an attempt to defuse King’s ideas and passion. Summing up the sense of disillusionment, Dennis states: “This country had its opportunity to choose the right road but they decided over and over again to take the wrong way.”