Parents' Guide to True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality

This is an important and moving documentary. True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality lays out the historic scar on America that began with enslavement and went on through lynchings, oppressive Jim Crow laws, segregation, and other brutal and discriminatory policies. Attorney Bryan Stevenson is the perfect spokesman for this cause, radiating compassion and decency as he eloquently compares the history of slavery with the brutality of South Africa's apartheid, the Rwandan government's genocide policies, and Nazi Germany's efforts to wipe out European Jewry. He argues that unlike the other countries that have admitted their mistakes, America still glorifies a narrative of the great old days of the South. In Germany, he points out, sites of abductions of Jewish families are publicly marked, and laws require remembrance of that government's wrong-doing, policies that helped that country heal. In the United States, he suggests, where only recently the proliferation of Confederate monuments has been questioned, civil rights activists won the legal battle, but the narrative battle was won by those allowed to hold on to the view that there are differences between Black people and white people.

The directing team of veteran documentary maker Peter Kunhardt and his filmmaking sons George and Teddy have together worked on wide-ranging projects including the PBS show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the documentary John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls. They bring experience, talent, and restraint to this necessary project, one that would be a vital addition to every teen's understanding of continuing inequality in this country today.