Directed by Pat Hartley and Dick Fontaine • 1982 • United States

Fifteen years after the end of Jim Crow, writer, activist, and cultural critic James Baldwin returns to the American South for a thought-provoking journey that brings the region’s past and present into revealing dialogue. As he revisits the major sites of the civil rights struggle—from Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, to Atlanta, Georgia—Baldwin explores both what has changed in the intervening years and what, tellingly, has not. Featuring illuminating conversations with prominent activists and cultural figures like Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Oretha Castle Haley, and Chinua Achebe as well as everyday people, I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE offers an essential perspective on the changing face of the South, the legacy of the civil rights movement, and all that remains to be done.