One Black Family’s Sobering Fight to Keep Their Land

With Silver Dollar Road (Oct. 20, Prime Video), Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro director Raoul Peck adapts Lizzie Presser’s ProPublica article, “Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It” (published in collaboration with The New Yorker). Nonetheless, journalistic rigor is not this documentary’s strong suit. The story of a North Carolina clan struggling to retain their familial land in the face of intense developer pressure, it paints a warm portrait of relatives sticking together through thick and thin. When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees.

In Carteret County, North Carolina, Gertrude Reels owns dozens of acres that she inherited from her ancestors, who first acquired it courtesy of Elijah Reels in 1911. Located on Silver Dollar Road, which leads straight down to the water, this estate was the gathering place for generations of Reels men and women, including Gertrude’s daughter Mamie Ellison and granddaughter Kim Duhon, who wax nostalgic about the “magical” times spent there roaming around, playing, and hanging out with uncles who told tales of mermaids when they weren’t unloading seafood from their commercial fishing boats. Music, dancing, barbecues, and other festivities were a routine facet of summers at Silver Dollar Road, and they were all due to Gertrude’s claim on the plot, courtesy of heirs’ property laws which state that land is passed down through inheritance even without the presence of a formal will.

In 1978, Gertrude’s right of ownership was called into question by her uncle Shedrick, who declared that he had a deed stipulating that he owned Silver Dollar Road. On March 19, 1979, a court sided with him, granting him (and, later, a firm known as Adams Creek Associates) ownership of 13 waterfront acres. This incident initiated a legal battle, and Silver Dollar Road contextualizes it via brief preceding text cards and newspaper headlines about how former slaves had transformed swamplands into rich and vibrant areas and how, in the early 20th century, white supremacists had terrorized Black Southern landowners. The implication is clear: Shedrick was in league with, or being exploited by, white Adams Creek Associates businessmen who sought to snatch the Reels property and, presumably, develop it in a manner akin to surrounding projects with homes, golf courses, and boat slips fit for wealthy tourists.

Unfortunately, Silver Dollar Road never relays anything notable about Shedrick. Worse, it tells us absolutely nothing about Adams Creek Associates, including who actually runs it. By leaving it a shadowy mystery, Peck is free to insinuate that Adams Creek Associates is a racist outfit without having to grapple with (potentially complicating) facts. And insinuate he does, courtesy of Mamie—who in an old video is heard screaming to her brother about how this is “slavery time” and “this just how white people do”—and a Reels lawyer, James Hairston, who opines that race is the elephant in this contentious room. Simultaneously, however, Hairston admits that he has no evidence of, or anecdotal fact demonstrating, racism. Neither, it seems, does Peck—or, at least, none that he wishes to provide.

Silver Dollar Road presents few specifics to verify its conclusions about this apparent land-grab scheme, as well as about the subsequent prosecution of Gertrude’s sons Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels, who were charged by Adams Creek Associates with trespassing (for residing on property the company owned). Before long, both men were behind bars, where they stayed for nearly eight years. Peck’s film depicts the agony and fury of the duo’s relatives over these circumstances, and on the face of it, it certainly appears to be an unjustly long sentence for a relatively minor infraction. Again, though, the director eschews digging into the legal nitty gritty that created and perpetuated this scenario. The result is that viewers are meant to accept this as a grave (bigoted) injustice simply because the Reels believe it to be so, and Peck agrees.

This isn’t to argue that they’re wrong; rather, it’s to state that the onus is on Silver Dollar Road to prove such contentions, and its disinterest in seriously (and much less comprehensively) doing so sabotages its own mission. In the absence of so many basic and crucial particulars, there’s no way to ascertain the truth about what’s taken place with Silver Dollar Road. Mamie talks about how there’s been no racial progress in this country, and Kim recalls seeing her incarcerated uncles looking defeated in shackles and orange jumpsuits, both of which are meant to cast their ordeal as an extension (if not the epitome) of racist victimization. But Peck habitually fails to back them up with necessary corroborating material, so that even by the film’s conclusion, there’s no clarity about Shedrick’s motivations, the designs and nature of Adams Creek Associates, or the reasons why the Reels and their lawyers couldn’t swiftly extricate Melvin and Licurtis from prison.

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Instead of deep-diving into its narrative’s essentials, Silver Dollar Road expends its energy on portraying various Reels family members at home, on their land, and on the water. Those passages convey a sense of their camaraderie, their staunch convictions, and their desire to preserve their birthright less because it has financial value than because of its profound connection to their past. These sections are heartfelt, but they ultimately come at the expense of more substantial avenues of inquiry, and their disconnection from the bigger picture at hand causes the film to drag. By the time he gets to Melvin and Licurtis’ release, the director’s storytelling feels downright puzzling, so committed is it to prioritizing emotion over fundamental points.

Peck employs graphical maps and religious spirituals throughout Silver Dollar Road, lending the proceedings a professional, mournful sheen. Yet no amount of aesthetic polish can compensate for its refusal to touch upon the elementary elements and questions (What happened to Shedrick’s deed? On what grounds were Melvin and Licurtis sentenced to prison, and why wasn’t it immediately appealed? What’s happened to Silver Dollar Road today?) at the heart of its story—many of which can be found in Presser’s far more in-depth and illuminating article.

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