Movie-With All Deliberate Speed

With All Deliberate Speed is a 2004 documentary that looks at the landmark case Brown vs the Board of Education that pronounced the doctrine of separate but equal in schools as unconstitutional. But the judgement left some doubt as the Supreme Court added that segregation must be ended with "all deliberate speed" which left it open for many school systems to not do anything for years to de-segregate.

Now the subject matter of this film was really interesting. However, the film proposes to examine the aftermath of those four words in the title, but delivers a different story. Though it does examine the title phrase, it does so only in the last 4th of the movie, and really goes into the history of how the case was built and then judgement rendered by the Supreme Court. Which is OK, but it should have been differently titled and promoted differently.

Furthermore, while the subject matter was compelling, the way it was presented in the movie was not particularly. Somehow the script did not have much bite and it wandered a bit. The interviews with people involved in the case were a bit overused and it watered down the dramatic effect. And the dramatic readings from actors was not very effective, and sometimes bad. I will say Alicia Keyes did a good job with her dramatic readings.

It is shocking to learn that one school system closed down all its schools for 5 years just so it would not have to end segregation.

Not one of the best documentaries I have seen, it was OK. I would look forward to another documentarian taking on the subject in a better film, for it is interesting and a little frightening when you see a reflection of today's political culture.