Six people built something extraordinary in America, and America answered by taking the country away from them: Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, Frantz Fanon, Claudia Jones, Muhammad Ali. The passport, the title, the citizenship, the hospital room, the file.

Robeson was the most famous Black man on earth in 1949. Five years later he could not leave the country, and his name had been cut out of the All-American football rosters he earned in 1917 and 1918. Baldwin left for Paris with forty dollars and came home to a 1,884-page FBI file. Claudia Jones wrote one essay about Black women workers, landed on J. Edgar Hoover’s custodial detention list, and was deported to a country she had never seen. Ali gave up three and a half prime years, his heavyweight

Full documentary: youtu.be/o2LJNNVszo0