To the naked eye, Silver Dollar Road is a lush strip of pavement on a coastal flat, leading south to tidewater shoreline near Beaufort, North Carolina. The land teems with katydid choruses, the water with shrimp – enough for several members of the Reels family to make a living as fisherman, their boats dotting the sandy shore. There are creeks to either side of the Reelses’ 65 acres of land, some wooded and some open, purchased by Mitchell Reels just one generation removed from slavery.
To the Reels family, the land is indispensable, precious, indisputable. As captured in decades’ worth of home video and photos assembled in Silver Dollar Road, documentarian Raoul Peck’s riveting and infuriating new film, the land was a Black community haven – a rare beachfront away from white surveillance and suspicion, a safe social hub, a locus for prosperity and security. Several generations of Reelses and their extended families grew up there, or vacationed there, or were buried there.
