Independent Lens
Three Chaplains
Three Muslim chaplains aim to make change in one of America’s most powerful institutions—the military. For them, the fight for equality and religious freedom begins on the inside.
The Struggle & Hope
The rise and fall of Oklahoma’s post–Civil War all-black towns — and the people trying to safeguard the future of those that remain.
- Series
- America ReFramed
- Premiere Date
- February 19, 2019
- Length
- 60 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Series and Special Projects
Director
Kari Barber
A journalist-turned-documentary filmmaker from Oklahoma. Struggle & Hope is her first feature-length documentary as a director. Previously she worked as a researcher and reporter on the Frontline documentaries Flying Cheaper and Lost in Detention. Kari spent many years as a freelance journalist in Southeast Asia and West Africa before… Show more
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The Film
The prairies of Oklahoma were once dotted with some 60 thriving all-black towns, founded by freed African Americans turned homesteading pioneers in the wake of the Civil War. Interweaving the stories of three 21st-century inhabitants, the documentary Struggle & Hope charts these towns’ dramatic rise and slow disappearance.
Spencer Nero, a recent college grad and rodeo cowboy, has come home to raise cattle on the land his father and grandfather ranched. Thirtysomething councilwoman Keisha Currin is fighting to save her tiny community — sinking under the weight of a $30,000 water bill — from bankruptcy and annexation. And Harold Aldridge Jr., a grieving retired college professor and blues musician, finds himself struggling to write a history of Oklahoma that finally acknowledges the all-black towns’ existence and impact. Riveting archival footage of the towns’ vibrant cultural and economic past — a past of local universities, newspapers, and manufacturing plants, of oil barons, cowboys, and businesspeople — is juxtaposed with the evidence of their shrinking footprints to “just a spot on the road,” as Harold puts it. And yet, in the stories of these remaining residents, we witness heroic efforts to safeguard the communities’ independence, character, and even hopes for a better future.
