Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education hosts Screening of '13th' Documentary

The Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education will host a special screening of Ava DuVernay's documentary "13th" from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, in the Arkansas Union Theater. 

The film explores mass criminalization and the prison industrial complex through the intersections of race and justice and the ways that the prison system reflects the nation's history of racial inequality. 

Ratified in 1865, the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution abolished involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted." This documentary film named for that amendment draws connections between the prison system and slave plantations of the past through unpaid manual labor, convict leasing, and the profiteering from human bondage. 

DuVernay attempts to show the audience that not every person in prison is a criminal and not all crimes are created equal. 

In an NPR interview, DuVernay said "the idea behind '13th' is to give people that context [about prison systems] so that we don't make uninformed statements, that we can all work from a place of knowledge to try to get to a place where we just do better as Americans." 

DuVernay made the documentary to appeal to two different kinds of audiences — "folks out there that know about this and folks out there that have never heard of it." 

A talkback session will immediately follow the film screening. UA faculty panelists representing law, public policy, sociology and political science will take questions from the audience. Panelists will include Pearl Dowe, associate professor of political science and an affiliated faculty member of the Africa and African American Studies Program; Laurent Sacharoff, associate professor of law; and Rodney Engen, associate professor of sociology. 

Light refreshments will be available for participants during the screening. For more information, contact Adrain Smith at atsmith@uark.edu or 479-575-8405.