Film Screening & Discussion: Ava DuVernay's "14th"

Written in the wreckage of the Civil War, the 14th amendment was meant to close the door on the hierarchy of human worth. Instead, it has become a permanent argument. Ava DuVernay’s 14th pulls this constitutional fight out of the footnotes and into the present, chronicling the vicious battle over the amendment that has raged ever since. Threading deep archival scholarship with piercing headlines of today, 14th positions the country’s sharpest legal minds, historians and cultural voices in direct conversation with a question America still hasn’t settled: Who gets to belong?

14th calls on historians, scholars, curators, cultural workers and politicians across the spectrum — from Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna; from former Republican Senator Jeff Flake to current Democratic Senator Alex Padilla; from institutional leaders like Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden and Smithsonian Secretary Dr. Lonnie Bunch to social advocates like Stacey Abrams, Sherrilyn Ifill and Governor JB Pritzker; from critics and commentators like Hasan Piker, Van Lathan and Dean Withers to Pulitzer Prize winners Eric Foner and David Blight, among dozens of others.

Following the film, there will be a discussion with UMBC faculty.

Presented in partnership with UMBC's Department of History