Our Mockingbird

America ReFramed Season 3
  • Feature Film
  • 2015
  • 68 Mins

In the '80s, the desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked, but since then, schools have become even more segregated (Civil Rights Project). Our Mockingbird highlights the experiences of teens from two Birmingham, Alabama high schools -- one all black and one all white -- who collaborate on a production of the play, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

More from this film

Our Mockingbird

  • Feature Film
  • 2015

Trailer

In the '80s, the desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked, but since then, schools have become even more segregated (Civil Rights Project). Our Mockingbird highlights the experiences of teens from two Birmingham, Alabama high schools -- one all black and ...

Based on similar topics

Still Tomorrow

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Interview

A village woman with no high school diploma becomes China's most famous poet, and her book of poetry the best-selling such volume in China in the past 20 years. Still Tomorrow follows Yu Xiuhua, a 39-year-old woman living with cerebral ...

Brimstone & Glory

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Interview

The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico, is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. Conflagrant revelry engulfs the town, while artisans show off their technical virtuosity. For the three-quarters of Tultepec residents who work in pyrotechnics ...

Cameraperson

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Feature Film

A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into a tapestry of footage captured over the twenty-five-year career of cinematographer ...

Shalom Italia

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Feature Film

In Shalom Italia, three Italian Jewish brothers set off on a journey through Tuscany, in search of a cave where they hid as children to escape the Nazis. Their quest, full of humor, food and Tuscan landscapes, straddles the boundary ...

Presenting Princess Shaw

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Feature Film

Samantha Montgomery placed her dreams on YouTube. Then they became a reality. Presenting Princess Shaw is the extraordinary story of an aspiring musician, down on her luck, who inspired internationally famous musician, composer and video artist Ophir "Kutiman" Kutiel to ...

StoryCorps Shorts: The Temple of Knowledge

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

Ronald Clark's father was a custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library ...

StoryCorps Shorts: School's Out

  • Short Film
  • 2016

Short Film

Following the federal mandate to integrate schools in the 1950's, Reverend James Seawood recalls how African Americans were forced out of Sheridan, Arkansas, the fate of his beloved school, and the human cost of "urban renewal."

StoryCorps Shorts: A More Perfect Union

  • Short Film
  • 2015

Short Film

When Theresa Burroughs came of voting age, she was ready to cast her ballot — but she had a long fight ahead of her. During the Jim Crow era, the board of registrars at Alabama's Hale County Courthouse prevented ...

The Barber of Birmingham

  • Short Film
  • 2012

Short Film

In this 2012 Oscar-nominated short film, Alabama barber and civil rights veteran James Armstrong experiences the fulfillment of an unimaginable dream: the election of the first African-American president. An Official Selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Produced in association ...

Big Birding Day

  • Short Film
  • 2011

Short Film

David Wilson offers a glimpse into the world of competitive birdwatching, as three friends attempt to see as many species as possible in 24 hours.

Joe's Violin

  • Short Film
  • 2017

Short Film

In the Oscar-nominated Joe's Violin, a donated musical instrument forges an improbable friendship. 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold and 12-year-old Bronx school girl Brianna Perez show how the power of music can bring light in the darkest of times, and ...

Graven Image

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument: Georgia’s Stone Mountain.

Balloonfest

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

The city of Cleveland was abuzz on September 27, 1986. Over 1.5 million balloons were about to be released at once, breaking the world record. What could go wrong?

The Changing Same

  • Short Film
  • 2019

Short Film

In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where resident and poet L. Lamar Wilson runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history. A co-presentation ...

Edgecombe

  • Short Film
  • 2020

Short Film

Through the deeply personal truths of three local residents, Edgecombe examines the ways trauma repeats and reinvents itself in rural black communities.

Gentlemen of Vision

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Gentlemen of Vision follows a year in the life of coach, counselor and founder Marlon Wharton, and his 2015-2016 class of young Black males as he strives to rewrite future prospects for his students. While striving for excellence in school ...

For Ahkeem

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Expelled from high school, Daje Shelton is only 17 years old when she is sentenced by a judge – not to prison, but to an alternative school, the Innovative Concept Academy. It offers Daje one last chance to earn a high ...

Agents of Change

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Agents of Change examines the racial conditions on college campuses across the U.S. in the late 1960’s, focusing on student demands at two seminal protests: San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969. Many of the ...

100 Years

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

100 Years: One Woman's Fight for Justice​ is the compelling story of Elouise Cobell, a petite Blackfeet warrior from Montana, the great granddaughter of the legendary, Mountain Chief. As an advocate for Native American financial self-determination and independence, she conducted ...

The Corridor

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

The Corridor​ shows the inner-workings and challenges of San Francisco’s Five Keys Charter School − the first high school of its kind in the United States designed to provide incarcerated adults the opportunity to earn a high school diploma to ...

Film Credits

  • Sandra Jaffe Director, Producer
  • Bernice Schneider Editor
  • Steward Jones Cinematographer
  • John Kusiak Composer

Critical Acclaim

Though we may think we no longer need to engineer experiences that bring kids of different races together, Our Mockingbird strongly suggests otherwise.

Melinda Henneberger, The Washington Post

Press Room

POV’s While We Watched Receives a Peabody Awards Nomination America ReFramed Acquires the Compelling Documentary A Woman on the Outside to Open WORLD’s Newest Content Theme “Liberated Lives” Beginning March 28, 2024 POV Acquires Who I am Not, a Thoughtful Documentary About What it Means to be Intersex in a Binary World, Will Debut as Part of POV’s 37th Season Launching Summer 2024
More from The Press Room

Broadcast schedule

Check your local PBS station
for upcoming airings of America ReFramed

More from this series

Learn more about America ReFramed