Born in the Struggle

“It’s a very, very important film about a movement that, I think, people don’t quite understand” - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Overview

Born In The Struggle is a documentary film that explores the personal accounts of children born to 1960s and 70s radical Black Power activists, including the Honorable Ras J. Baraka, Mayor of the City of Newark, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Fred Hampton Jr, Imani Perry, Ayanna Gregory, and many others.

The film examines their reflections and ruminations on their childhood, the influences of their parents, and how the activism of their parents affected their lives. The shifting cultural times have presented unique but enduring challenges to this new generation. How they have taken up these novel challenges of injustice are explored, with hip hop music being a defining feature that named and proclaimed the black experience for a new generation facing oppression and exploitation.

More than anything, Born in the Struggle is a personal exploration of the Children of the Movement, whose childhoods were defined by their parents’ commitment to the Movement as a first priority, and how this dedication shaped their lives and their subsequent commitments to the same revolutionary spirit that they inherited.