Close to 400 people crowded into the Senator Theatre last night in Baltimore for the premiere of EJJI’s new film, Eroding History, and two other films that focused on environmental justice that our staff was involved in making. 

Eroding History tells the story of two Black communities on the Deal Island Peninsula that are losing their land and their history due to the intersection of historical racism and modern climate changes. Disruption: The Highway to Nowhere recounts the story of how Robert Moses helped to push a highway through Baltimore’s thriving communities of Harlem Park, Poppleton and Old West Baltimore and dismantled the city’s center of thriving Black life. Smithville tells the story of a once-vibrant Black community on the Eastern Shore that is now down to three residents, all of them elderly.

Black filmmakers directed all three of these films. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Andre Chung, an in-demand news and portrait photographer, directed Eroding History. Sean Yoes, a longtime journalist for the Baltimore Afro and a radio host at WEAA in Baltimore, directed the Highway to Nowhere. And Wyman Jones Jr., a regional filmmaker, made Smithville when he was a senior at Morgan State University. 

EJJI was proud to produce Disruption and Eroding History. EJJI co-founders Donzell Brown and Rona Kobell executive produced Disruption; Kobell produced and wrote Eroding History along with Yoes and Chung; and Kobell also produced and wrote Smithville while with Maryland Sea Grant. 

Eroding History, and Smithville, are among the few films that center Black communities at the forefront of climate change. Black people are often on the lowest land, because that was the only land that was available to them. On the Eastern Shore, where everything is low, the lowest spot is a dangerous place. Indeed, many Black families have watched their land, and with it their generational wealth, become worthless and water rises and saltwater intrusion and marsh migration render their land useless. With Disruption, a native of West Baltimore tells a story familiar to him all his life and centers the narrative on what was lost and why the wounds are still so fresh. That Black filmmakers are telling these stories is important, and EJJI is proud of its role in providing a platform for both telling and disseminating these films.

You can watch Disruption here. And you can watch Smithville here.

Eroding History is not available online yet, but please check our site here and we will post upcoming dates for screenings. 

If your organization wants a screening with the panelists, contact rona@ejji.org.

If you want to support the film, you can donate here.

Thank you!