Where is Dr. King's Dream Today?

By Celina R. De Leon, WireTap. Posted January 16, 2006.

As we celebrate the birth of the great civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is only appropriate to see where his dream of social justice and equal opportunity is today. The new film by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, "The Boys of Baraka," shares a glimpse of Dr. King's ideal in today's public school system.

According to these filmmakers, equal opportunity and potential for social mobility are far from reality for lower-income, inner-city children, who are predominantly African American and Hispanic. Public schools in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Oakland and thousands of urban areas across the country look almost exactly like schools in Mississippi 50 years ago -- poorly funded, segregated and offering low-quality education.

"The Boys of Baraka" documents the lives of four 12-year-old boys from the rough streets of Baltimore, who escape their fate and find better education in Kenya. Richard, his younger brother Romesh, Devon and Montrey went to a school where 75 percent of African American boys do not graduate from high school. They were selected, along with 16 other seventh-graders and 20 eighth-graders, to take part in an experimental private boarding school -- the Baraka School in rural Laikipia, Kenya.

The film skillfully captures their individual journeys and transitions from their toxic home lives -- Devon's mom is struggling with drug addiction, Richard and Romesh's father is in jail -- and the realities of their violent inner-city environment to the potential-filled lives they are allowed to lead at the Baraka School.

"The Boys of Baraka" brings to the big screen what thousands of children and families across this nation endure every day: the fight for potential, the fight for an education.

WireTap spoke to Heidi Ewing about their new film.

Why did you decide to do a film on the Baraka School?

Well, actually I had read an article about it very randomly several years ago in a Time magazine that was lying around the production office I was working in. There was a sidebar article on this alternative experimental boarding school in it, and I thought it was a wild concept and a strange idea, and the makings of an important film, at least an interesting film. And then when Rachel [Grady] and I started Loki films soon after that, it was one of the first projects we started developing. We started attempting to get access to the school through the Abell Foundation [co-founder of the Baraka School]. And after a year of poking and prodding them, they finally agreed to allow us to make the film.

Was there a particular message you wanted to convey through this film?

At the beginning of the making of this film, it was more of a curiosity -- "Did this program work or not?" "Does removing a child from a toxic environment and allowing him to start over in a completely different place … does that work? And is that good, is that bad, is it realistic?" It sort of started out with those types of questions in mind.

And then, of course, with the boys, it became very personal. We fell in love with the kids right away. We befriended the families, and we got a very strong relationship with all those kids and their parents. Then the kids started to sparkle, and then we recognized how incredible these kids were. And seeing that juxtaposed to the poverty in which these kids live and the lack of opportunity, and then the dangers in their neighborhoods, it started to become a film about potential and the impossibly wasted potential.

There was no reason the kids in our film couldn't go on to be an attorney or doctor or social worker or graduate from Princeton or do whatever any other person with privilege could do. And so it became to us a number of things, following their story and their narrative the most truthful way we could, [and] showing to the audience -- of these kids who represent one of the million kids in America -- that they have what it takes but are just not given the proper opportunity. We really wanted to make clear what these kids are capable of and also what they're up against in inner-city America.

Do you think the boys in the film also wanted to show this reality?

I don't think they ever realized the kind of power this medium has. But then they realized after we stuck around for years. It took us three and a half years to make the film. They realized how we kept showing up, and how we were determined to do something. They stayed dedicated and loyal to the project, and I think that's because they knew --they had an inkling, anyway -- that there was a bigger story being told here. I'd like to believe that anyway.

Celina R. De Leon is a social justice journalist based in Brooklyn, NY.

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