Review: In ‘Silver Dollar Road,’ a Black family sees its longtime home slipping out of its grasp

Black ownership of land in America is a story forged with hope in the first decades after slavery, and routinely eroded since by physical violence, government discrimination and legal theft. The long trail of one family’s ties to their precious land is shown with intimacy, joy, heartbreak and grit in “I Am Not Your Negro” filmmaker Raoul Peck’s new documentary, “Silver Dollar Road.”

The title refers to a sleepy coastal acreage in North Carolina that Reels family ancestor Mitchell bought in the early 1900s, but in the absence of a will, became murkily divided into “heirs’ property” shares. In the 1970s, his grandchildren Mamie, Licurtis and Melvin, who lived there, farmed the land, fished its waters and celebrated with family on it, learned this twist in ownership the hard way: An older relative secretly (but ostensibly legally) had sold the land to a white developer, turning them into eviction targets. When Licurtis and Melvin wouldn’t heed the notices, the county in 2011 threw them in jail for eight years.

“Silver Dollar Road” is an awful story, but only because inside it is a beautiful one of what this peaceful enclave on Adams Creek has meant to generations of Reels. Peck opens with Mamie’s mother, Gertrude, having a 95th birthday; across snapshots, stories, home video and footage accompanying family members as they traverse the property or navigate the creek, the homey serenity of the family’s considerable property comes alive for us. Later, when Mamie tells us what the developers’ plans are, Peck shows us an overhead shot of the land, tracing over its spare beaches, fields and woods with white outlines for the proposed estates, clubhouse and golf course — it feels like soulless vandalism.

An image from “Silver Dollar Road.”

(Wayne Lawrence / Amazon Studios)

And who are/is the mysterious (but obviously venal) Adams Creek Associates? We don’t see or hear them, save a news clip in which a reporter gets a no-longer-in-service response when trying to reach a listed number, and some perfunctory text at the end relating their professed blamelessness. In other words, if your recipe for outrage needs a villainous presence, Peck isn’t interested in stoking it that way, and shouldn’t need to. That’s not the oxygen “Silver Dollar Road,” building off a 2019 ProPublica article by Lizzie Presser, wants to breathe. Rather, it’s the warmth, togetherness and persistence of a family fighting a ruthlessly unfair system, holding onto each other as forces move to expel them.

Could the film have laid out a more detailed explanation of the legal quagmire that heirs’ properties find themselves in? Perhaps. Docs have hardwired us to expect talking heads, text and graphics. But if we’re to fully understand how confusing this all is for families, even for attorneys and courts, and how easily exploitable it is by the heartlessly greedy, then the lack of clarity — voiced with poignant resignation by Kim — is its own artfully inartful point. Peck is operating at the other extreme from the poetic, unhidden fire of James Baldwin’s words in “I Am Not Your Negro”: Here, the inexplicable cruelty of two men locked away for being on their own land as their depressed, stoic mother refuses to go outdoors says plenty. Nearly screams it.

Compounding the sense of despair is that for the Reels, who describe childhoods on their land as magical, this hardship has shrunk their concept of security, from a geographical area that once felt bountiful, free and an embodiment of the American dream, to a state of mind contingent on whenever their family can congregate unharassed. And even then, at the end, we see Licurtis step away from a boisterous Memorial Day party to be alone with his emotions, with the sad weight of what he’s been through. “Silver Dollar Road,” with its mix of rich and troublesome legacies, has that power too.