The documentary film The Abolitionists explores the people and personalities who breathed life into the crusade to end slavery in America.

The two-hour film made its national broadcast debut on PBS's American Experience in January of 2013.

Not too long after that, I assigned it as required viewing for students in my African

American history through film class. I began teaching my film course in 2012, just before the

abolitionists came out. Then, as now, the class meets one day a week, always on Mondays for three hours.

During our time together, my students and I watch a major motion picture that attempts to chronicle an aspect of the black experience from slavery through the present.

Over the years, we've watched everything from 12 years a slave to Fruitvale Station to moonlight.

Last year, I tossed in mudbound, and this year I've added Black Klansmen and the hate you give.

This class has proven to be wonderfully effective in getting students to think critically about popular perceptions of the black past.

The key to his success, though, is not the movies that we watch together.

That's just what fills seats.

Tell a kid that we'll be watching Black Panther and get out in lieu of reading a textbook,

and they're down for whatever. The reason the class actually

works is because I pair each movie with several hours of documentary films on the movie's

core subject. I have a devil of a time getting students to read for 20 minutes, but they'll

watch a two-hour documentary on Netflix in a heartbeat.

The students view the documentaries during the week leading up to our Monday classes,

and I watch those documentaries that I've never seen before during the weekend before we meet.

And so it was a few years ago on a quiet Sunday afternoon that I was watching the abolitionists

in preparation for viewing glory in class the next day.

And as I was doing so, my then five-year-old daughter Asha kept popping in and out of the room,

stealing glances at the television trying to figure out what I was watching.

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