'An Outrage' Documentary on Lynchings to Be Screened

"An Outrage," a documentary film about lynchings in the South that claimed the lives of more than 4,000 African Americans between 1877 and 1950, will be screened at a Community Forum in Newbury Park on Friday, June 15.

The 7 p.m. screening at the Conejo Valley Unitarian Fellowship at 3327 Old Conejo Road will be followed by a discussion led by members of the church's Racial and Cultural Justice Ministry team. The members attended the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. on April 26.

The documentary, filmed on location at lynching sites in six states, sheds light on a topic that the filmmakers have said has been widely ignored as too troubling to teach or too ugly for polite conversation. Six million black Americans fled the South during the reign of socially sanctioned lynchings, according to the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, which provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced or abused in state jails and prisons.

The Memorial for Peace and Justice was conceived with the aim of creating a sober, meaningful site where people can gather and reflect on America’s history of racial inequality.

"Lynching, in its late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century forms, rarely happens in the United States today," co-filmmaker Lance Warren writes on the documentary's website. "And yet, the twenty-first century movement for black lives reminds us what matters: To be a black American is to be marked, endangered, tried and convicted by the color of skin, always at risk of destruction."

The program is open to the public with no admission charge. Donations are welcome to help cover expenses. For information, contact Randall Edwards through the church office at (805) 498-9548 or visit forum.cvuuf.org.