Welcome To ‘Silver Dollar Road,’ Where Prime Black Land Becomes Target Of White Control
deadline.comFor the descendants of Elijah Reels, an area of coastal North Carolina in Carteret County has been their sanctuary – where they could raise their families, earn a living, and enjoy the bounty and the pleasures of the waterways.
But in recent decades, those descendants — Gertrude Reels, her children, and their children — have been trying to hold onto the family land, caught up in a legal system that historically advantages white interests over those of African Americans like the Reels.
The family’s long struggle — which has seen two members of the family, Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels, jailed for years for defying a court order — is told in the documentary Silver Dollar Road.
The film directed by Oscar nominee Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) is now streaming on Prime Video. “When you are there, you feel that you in a sort of, I can’t say paradise, but for them it is because it’s their home,” Peck tells Deadline. “It’s where they were born, it’s where their ancestors were.
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