Popcorn, Pizza and Peace

Peace Ministry

“Driving While Black: Race, Space, and Mobility”
Movie Content Advisory Mature themes, including historical, archival, and photographic depictions of violence, racial slurs, and discussions of police brutality. It is recommended for older children, teenagers, and adults. While not officially rated, it is appropriate for children ages 13+; PG at the discretion of a parent.

Our Juneteenth 2026 film is “Driving While Black: Race, Space, and Mobility,” a PBS 2020 documentary. This film by acclaimed historian Dr. Gretchen Sorin and Emmy–winning director Ric Burns chronicles the riveting history and personal experiences of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond. These experiences are liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming.

Although a recent colloquial phrase of the 1990s, “Driving While Black” explores how it is rooted in realities that have been part of the African American experience for hundreds of years and is told in large part through the stories of the men, women, and children who lived through it.

Writer and scholar Herb Boyd says in the film that this “entails so much more than the simply driving while Black. It’s living while Black. It’s sleeping while Black. It’s eating while Black. It’s moving while Black. So, when we start talking about the restrictions placed on Black movement in this country, that’s a long history. That goes all the way back to day one. And so, you have to get to the root of it.”

This Popcorn, Pizza, and Peace program is offered by the Peace Ministry to recognize Juneteenth, the original celebration of slaves in Texas being emancipated by the Union army at the conclusion of the Civil War that now extends to the emancipation of all enslaved people and the struggles for equality for African Americans today. Juneteenth is the second of the three annual film events presented by the Peace Ministry each year.

The event includes discussion following this two-hour documentary. The doors open at 5 pm, with food and drink available starting at 5:15 pm. The program begins at 5:45 pm with the film starting at 6 pm. Discussion follows around 8:10 pm.

Background on the film’s writer and producers:

Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship – and based on and inspired in large part by Gretchen Sorin’s recently published study of the way the automobile and highways transformed African American life across the 20th century (“Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights,” W.W. Norton, 2020) – the film examines the history of African Americans on the road from the depths of the Depression to the height of the Civil Rights movement and beyond, exploring along the way the deeply embedded dynamics of race, space, and mobility in America during one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in American history.

Sorin, a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program, started her research more than 20 years ago as an exhibition curator assembling visual records and oral histories of how the automobile provided greater mobility for Black Americans while further exposing them to systemic racism across the country. As she began her book, she approached Ric Burns to work with her on a film.

Burns said, “Nothing is more American than the dream of mobility, which has throughout our history been accompanied by the reality of racism. Sorin’s research has allowed us to assemble a moving, visual story that shows the joy and liberation that accompanied the freedom promised by the automobile and the daily struggle for Black Americans to seek their independence in a country that, to this day, does not fully acknowledge how systemic racism defines much of our history.

Fee, includes pizza, popcorn, and other light refreshments: $15. Pre-registration required.

Email [email protected] for scholarship information.

Sign Up By Wed, Jun 17 at 7:00 pm
https://frc.retreatportal.com/calendar/event?programcode=26SCN79056