Amelia Zeitlin

Dear Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
Your movie was something that I will always remember when I go back to thinking about how much of a history that Blacks ever had. The documentary was one word. BREATHTAKING… I love everything in that movie had to it. The way you described it, obviously you and others must have put a lot of thought into it. Thank you for making this memorable Documentary.

One of my thoughts about the movie was that it was amazing and magnificent and terribly horrifying at the same time. When you show the videotapes and pictures of the slaves and untreated people, what they did to blacks, was just horrid and gruesome.
Another thing I thought about was that, the Historians that you interviewed knew and remembered so much and for me, going back to that terrible time, would just be devastating. I would feel sad, and upset.
I want to go back to the time when I watched the first episode, I was sitting there, on the edge of my chair, eager to find out what happened to Precilla.
I love how you did this thing where FINALLY something good happens, and the whole class cheers and then the sad and depressing music and you announce,like, another fight broke out!!! Or… A judge once again sides with a white person.
But it made us wonder, ” What will happen next”? “We’ll won’t find out until it happens”… But usually, that is good in a movie, a surprise when you least expect it.
Another part of the Documentary that stuck to my memory was the “Detroit Riot”. There was quite a few of them, but the one that made the most damage was the one that turned Detroit upside down. With bombs to gunshots to even MORE weapons. The fights were gruesome; Not a fight like this could be called “innocent”, now in court. It was something that I could NEVER forget, it was horrible. Even little children were getting hurt. It was disgusting what whites did to blacks. PURELY DISGUSTING….

Another thing about your Documentary was how engaged you seemed. You went everywhere, finding out as much as you could. And it was almost like an Investigation scene. You go one place to another, little by little, you are unweaving more and more things you never knew. Thats why your documentary was soooo amazing and magnificent.

In the past, whites (some) have been so nasty and rude. They would alienate blacks, as if they were another creature. And sometimes, they would hire scientists to prove that blacks had a different size of their skull and that they were far from ever being the same as them, (whites.)
Another part of your Documentary that showed me how rude people can be was when whites would make fun of blacks was when whites would make obnoxious pictures to mean T.V shows about how blacks are “DIFFERENT”.
All I thought was WHOA!!! Personally, I think that whites should have been the ones that should be arrested instead of the blacks. The innocent blacks.

One of my favorite parts was when Malcolm X came into the documentary. Boy, oh boy, he was fed up and tired of how blacks where getting treated.
Whenever I think about Malcolm X, I think about how different Martin Luther King was to Malcolm X. I’m not saying one is better is better than the other, they just thought differently about the un-equality deal. Malcolm X was wanting to deal with racism PHYSICALLY. And Martin Luther King decked with Racism with his emotional thoughts about it. VERBALLY.

I love when each episode ends, it was nice, simple, and short. It ended with a thoughtful comment, or a picture and then me and the whole class would cheer and beg my teacher, Ms. Cyphers to watch another episode. THATS HOW AWESOME IT WAS!!!!

How long did it take you to get all of those facts together and make that good of a documentary???
I mean, it had ALL of the good qualities a documentary needs. And well… it TOTALLY drew me in.
At first, I thought that this would be the kind of documentary where there is someone talking and just randomly saying facts. but after I watched it, WOW. You should really make more documentaries like this. I bet you would get like, a bunch of movie awards.

Thank you, Henry Louis Gates Jr. for making this movie and changing my life… FOREVER.

Sincerely,
Amelia Zeitlin