13th

Ava Duvernay’s documentary 13th is a critical examination of the historical, political, and cultural factors that have led to America’s disproportionate incarceration of Black Americans since the 13th Amendment, which officially abolished slavery in the United States of America. The documentary leverages different forms of media – historical photographs, primary video and audio footage, excerpts of famous rap songs, and creative graphic imaging – to creatively show the relationships between past injustices and current social problems in the U.S. Stylistically, the documentary re-invents the genre through its creative compilations, communicating through images, graphics, and song alongside the traditional documentary mainstays of primary source footage and expert interviews.

Teaching Resources

The full feature documentary is freely available on YouTube, making it easy for students to access outside of class. Ava DuVernay’s website for the project lists several media publications that discuss the project and its awards which can serve as good secondary resources that model how professional publications discuss and articulate the complex issues raised in the documentary (one of the skills students are asked to demonstrate in the task below).

The activity for this text offers an organizational template for viewing the documentary by dividing it into its structured parts and asking students to synthesize and articulate the most important point (or main idea) for each part of the documentary. Students are then asked to identify stand out features and their effects that affect their viewing experience and engagement with the text. This helps students develop awareness around their viewing experience, and point to choices made by the documentarian that work to communicate meaning and feelings around the issues being raised in the film.

A Note about the Resources

In the execution of the plan, I do recommend pausing the film so that students can have time to take notes and articulate their thinking in the table. It can also be helpful to do a “turn and talk” after each part (switching partners) so that students can share their thoughts and observations as well as get feedback on their ideas (this also helps with accountability for taking notes). Some parts of the documentary express rather complex ideas, so it may be helpful to have some pairs share out to the group on how they are synthesizing these ideas into language (a challenging skill that I think we sometimes take for granted as adult English teachers – exposure and models helps students see how they use vocabulary and complex sentence structures to more specifically and effectively communicate their thinking).