Richard Robert Right Movie Analysis

The quote from a 13 year old Richard Robert Right, from which this documentary is entitled, comes from just a spec in history, but is seemingly the perfect description for a film depicting the rise of African Americans in education. I had high hopes for this film before watching it and even though I was not disappointed, I can say that I learned more than I anticipated. It is easy to think that after years of schooling and being a part of the African American race you can consider yourself an expert on all things “black”, when in all actuality that is not the case.
It is very well known the mental, physical, and emotional oppression invoked upon African Americans during slavery. As described in the film, slave owners seemed to do everything
Most black colleges were run by whites and had the same oppressive undertone to their rules and regulations. An uprising at Fisk University inspired by W.E.B. Dubois became the starting point of students standing up and black colleges changed for the better. Black colleges began to redefine what it meant to be black in America; these colleges spit out black teachers, lawyers, doctors etc during this time and students were exposed not to trade teaching, but a real education. With a newly educated generation, blacks could now fight more effectively for rights in America on a legal level. Mortaky Johnson was the first black president of Howard University and recruited black lawyers to be trained and sent out to make a difference. With the help of Charles Hamilton Houston, lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall challenge segregation as separate but not equal. This is the first example of blacks “not just creating knowledge for the sake of having it but creating knowledge in order to do something concrete with that knowledge”. This is more powerful to me than anything because it marks yet another term of a generation for African