“Silver Dollar Road”: Black land loss still happening in the U.S.
Sixty-five acres on the coast of North Carolina were purchased by Mamie Reels Ellison’s great-grandfather in the aftermath of slavery. That land on Silver Dollar Road became a home, a place to farm and fish, and a sanctuary, stretching from its pine and gum-tree woods to a sandy beach, where the Reels family relaxed for generations.
By the 2000s, though, the Reels homestead was in jeopardy. Developers had claimed the waterfront property, and Mamie’s two brothers, Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels, lost eight years in jail for refusing to vacate their houses. Directed by Raoul Peck, “Silver Dollar Road” adapts a 2019 Propublica feature by Lizzie Presser into an intimate portrait of the family’s forbearance in the face of dispossession.
Mamie and her niece Kim Duhon lead the family’s effort to hold onto the land, but while dipping into the legal morass, Peck’s film is more about sitting with the two women and their relatives, hearing out their fears and hopes as their ancestors’ land sits in limbo. Peck, who directed the fierce and engrossing James Baldwin documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” refrains from systemic- style analysis to let the family speak for themselves about their experience.
A birthday gathering for 95-year- old Gertrude Reels sets the tone early on for the family’s tight-knit circles and sense of continuity. Interviews with Mamie and Kim evoke fond memories of their childhood haven, illustrated with faded photographs; and Melvin, a fisherman with a winning flair, gives us an on-the-ground sense of the land, roaming through woods and waterways.
Their legal trouble dates back to the 1970s when a Reels patriarch, suspicious of Southern courts, died without leaving a will. His land was passed to his children, but one of the coowning relatives secretly sold the land to a developer through a legal loophole. It’s only one maneuver among many that have been exploited in a vicious history of Black land dispossession, as the film’s concise captions make clear: Over the course of the 20th century, Black Americans lost about 90% of their farmland.
The film’s second half shifts to the battle to free Melvin and Licurtis from a sentence whose substantial length feels racially motivated.
Amid the looming threats to a cherished home, Peck’s accomplishment is to let the Reels family own their emotional space.