Documentary Explores Controversial Arrest of Black Scholar

The documentary The Presumption of Guilt: Race, Class, and Crime in America will be screened on Thursday, March 28 at Essex County College’s (ECC) main Newark campus. The film will be shown at 11:30 a.m. in Smith Hall.

Based on the bestselling book by the same name, the documentary tells the 2009 story of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. who was arrested by police in Cambridge, Mass. after he was spotted attempting to “break into” a home. It turned out to be his own home as he was having trouble with the lock.

The incident became national news and even sparked comments by President Obama.

The book was written by Harvard Law School Professor Charles J. Ogletree, a colleague of Gates. The film is directed by Hafiz Farid, who co-wrote the adaptation with Shelley Grodner Seidenstein.

The film is free and open to the public. It is presented by ECC’s Office of Academic Affairs and the Africana Institute. Additional information is available by calling 973-877-3219.

The film also features insights by Michelle Alexander, Ohio State University law professor and Civil Rights activist; Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor and noted defense attorney; poet, novelist and activist Maya Angelou; Tim Wise, anti-racism activist and writer, and Anita Hill, attorney and professor at Brandeis University. In 1991, she accused then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when he was her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education.

Following the film, there will be a discussion with Farid, Seidenstein, Dr. Clement Price, Director of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture & the Modern Experience at Rutgers-Newark, and a Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History, and Africana Institute Director Dr. Akil Khalfani.