DAY 7 – SEPTEMBER 18th – Northeastern University (formerly Mills College) – Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall
The Fight for Black Lives chronicles the ways that racial stress and the American healthcare system disadvantages the health of Black Americans. This health disparity is traced back to emancipation, which increased the Black mortality rate, in part, because formerly enslaved people had no access to formal health care even when they could pay. The film shows that there is nothing new about the disproportionate rate of Black mortality that was associated with the COVID-19 pandemic by showing that on almost all measures of health Black people in the United states live sicker and die younger.
These health disparities start at the very beginning of life and the most shocking aspect of this is that the likelihood that Black newborns will die relative to White newborns is higher today than it was in 1900. The film weaves together stories of women who were pregnant during the pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings, interviews with Black health experts, and historical records to show the many ways that Black women have had to fight for their life and the lives of their infants in the delivery room.
Micere Keels is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on understanding how race, ethnicity, and poverty structure exposure to challenges that place people at risk for poor life outcomes. She is particularly invested in systems-change interventions that can narrow intergenerational inequities. This is her first attempt at using popular narrative forms to influence how people understand persistent inequities.
“The injustice of high overall Black mortality and how it shows up in maternal and infant wellbeing is both personal and political for me. Within a 12-month period in my early 20s I went from my excessive menstrual bleeding not being taken seriously at the emergency room, to a doctor suggesting that the bleeding may be due to having a long-term untreated STD and recommending immediate precautionary medications before waiting for test results, to finally receiving the appropriate examination and diagnosis of large obstructive fibroids that were removed in expedited surgery. Fibroids that had been there so long they had begun to calcify. Fibroids that were identified only after I drove 45 minutes to begin seeing a female gynecologist of color.
Like the women profiled in The Fight For Black Lives, I also have a pregnancy story: complications during pregnancy, excessive bleeding during delivery, and a scary moment when they were “worried that you wouldn’t make it.” I have long known that my experiences weren’t unique, almost every Black woman that I know has a story about not receiving appropriate medical care.
Filming began 21 months after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was frustrated by media coverage of the high Black mortality rate that made it seem as if disparate Black mortality was something new, something caused by this pandemic. The reality is that every documented American public health crisis shows that Black people are among those most likely to die, this includes Yellow Fever in the late 1800s, Spanish Flu in 1918, the AIDS epidemic in 1981, and H1N1 Influenza in 2009. Yet, in 2020 we had to fight to get all state public health departments to report COVID deaths by race to prove disparate infection and mortality.
News that maternal mortality was rising during the pandemic, and the tragic stories of loss among Black women who had low-risk pregnancies but lost their lives in the delivery room or shortly after, spurred the making of this documentary. During that time findings from Maternal Mortality Review committees were coming out and showing that over 80% of pregnancy related deaths are preventable.
I interviewed many experts and in Boston I connected with professor Laurie Nsiah Jefferson of University of Massachusetts Boston who connected me with Black women who were pregnant during the pandemic and speaking out about their experiences of medical mistreatment. I hope this film will help audiences understand the historical roots and present-day manifestations of systemic racism as it relates to the health of Black Americans, especially Black mothers and their babies.”
Micere Keels
A compelling, artistic, and humanitarian short film that shares the stories of people whose families overcame incredible odds to build lives in America.
Directed by Shaun Daniels
KEITH LAMAR: SWEET is a collaboration unfolding across and over the prison walls. It was inspired by a call between Keith LaMar and Samora Pinderhughes (Keith calling from death row), part of a series of interviews conducted as part of The Healing Project.
Keith LaMar is a writer, poet, and musician who has spent over 30 years in solitary confinement on Death Row in Ohio after being framed for murder following the 1993 Lucasville Prison Riot. Our mission, through this film, is to free him from prison.
The film was inspired in particular by a question that Samora posed to Keith: “what is one thing that nobody has ever asked you about?” Keith responded: “my sweetness”. What follows is a meditation on vulnerability and resilience in the face of the most horrible conditions imaginable.
This film was directed by Samora Pinderhughes, Christian Padron, and Amanda Krische. It is narrated by Keith Lamar and scored by Samora Pinderhughes and Rafiq Bhatia.
