4 Little Girls (1997)

 

4 Little Girls should be required viewing for every American. I don't care how old you are, what color you are, your political inclinations, or what part of the country you live in. I don't even care if you've never given the Civil Rights Movement a passing thought. You still need to watch this.

Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls follows the story of the 1963 16th Street church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls and caused over a dozen injuries. It led to the trial and conviction of Klansman Robert Chambliss, and it was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. The bombing elicited a national reaction of shock and outrage that helped spur the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it facilitated a shift in how white America viewed the Civil Rights Movement.

Spike Lee treats these events with the gravity and dignity they deserve: he pulls no punches, leaves no stone unturned, engages with the fury that this subject naturally dredges up, and also never loses his cool.

In the face of interviewees and recent (at the time) events that testify to the fact that American racism is still alive and well, this documentary declines to over-editorialize, electing instead to let the evidence speak for itself. I could not be more impressed with the handling of this film if I tried.

What makes 4 Little Girls worthy of the National Film Registry?

4 Little Girls was added to the National Film Registry in 2017, just ten years after it became eligible for consideration, and I think the reasons are self-evident.

This film is intense and no-holds-barred, yet sensitive, even tender, in dealing with this subject matter and interacting with the families of the girls who were killed. This film is undoubtedly significant from a historical perspective, and I could even see an argument being made for cultural significance as a film that unabashedly peeks under rocks that America at large would like to leave alone.

I also think the timing of the film's induction to the Registry is significant, even if it was not intended that way. In January 2018 (which is when the 2017 picks would have been announced) America was one year into an administration that simultaneously prized its racist values and denied that they even existed. 

As I write this, we are in the 2.0 iteration of that administration, and the acidic, vitriolic hatred currently dividing my country makes a film like this more important than perhaps its ever been. Yes, the events depicted in this film are over sixty years old. But yes, you still need to watch this if you have any interest at all in not repeating past mistakes.

In conclusion

I don't know what else to say about 4 Little Girls that I haven't already said. This one is major. I understand why it's not shown in schools...and it should probably be shown in schools. 

I remember taking a class in college in which we were discussing unlearning racist tendencies and automatic thoughts. One woman in the class grew frustrated, bursting out that she shouldn't have to take the class because she "didn't have a racist bone" in her body. 

I don't remember what the professor said, but I remember thinking that if that were true, she wouldn't be so upset at having to do this work. If she truly had no racism in her constitution, she would have nothing to fear from poking around and seeing what she found.

We all have biases, we all have prejudices, and no one wants to own up to that. It's human nature. But ignoring it, pushing it away, trying to justify it—none of that makes it okay or makes you not need to examine it. 

There's a lot of things I love about my country, but its self-righteous refusal to ignore systemic prejudice, and particularly its simultaneous self-righteous insistence on defending it, really drives me batty. We need to learn the lessons, and we need to do better, and watching a film like 4 Little Girls is a start.