"13th" Film Screening at Troy University

February 15, 2017 Troy University students of all different races and ethnicities, gathered to watch the 13th. A film and 2016 American documentary by director Ava DuVernay.


The documentary centered on race in the United States criminal justice system. The film is titled  after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery (unless as punishment for a crime.) The film opens with the idea that the United States is home to 2.3 million (2016) incarcerated and argues that slavery is being effectively held through mass incarceration.

In the 1960's Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King was labeled a liar by the FBI. King is notorious for being a pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. He was put in jail for protesting the rights for African-Americans. This is where he wrote the famous letter in the Birmingham jail.

The film touched on issues regarding mass incarceration, prison-industrial complex, slavery in the United States, and southern slavery.

Slavery was a economic system, when it was legal. Now large corporations enforce slavery by hiring prisoners. Prisoners create products of (all kind) while incarcerated.

During the Nixon and Reagan presidency, they allowed mass incarceration. The problem only got worse over time during the Clinton Administration. The film talks about the drug epidemic of crack-cocaine. Minorities were getting long sentences for drug charges.

Furthermore, this caused an immediate impact in the minority communities. Children were growing up in single-parent households, increasing problems.

The film describes in many ways that prisoners are disadvantage once their sentences are finished. Jobs are hard to find after being convicted for a crime. Voting rights are taken away and many freedoms are lost.

Students discussed the film in a panel discussion. "How we live is so far removed from how we should live," many students shared great ideas to unite our country.