Paul & Eslanda Robeson Cinema

"Now Is the Time" (1967) is a short documentary film that utilizes newsreel footage, literature, and archival materials to explore the history of Black resistance and anger in the United States. The film connects earlier African American writers, such as Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, with the Black Power movement. It was produced during the late 1960s to contextualize the rise of Black nationalism and address the American experience of slavery and inequality.

In October 1972, nine Black men and one white woman were wrongfully convicted of arson and conspiracy and sentenced by the North Carolina state court to 282 collective years in prison. An international cause célèbre, the so-called Wilmington 10 languished for nearly a decade in separate jails, even as journalists and lawyers exposed criminal wrongdoing in the State’s case; religious leaders, politicians, and activists demanded their release and exoneration; and the Soviet Union brandished their photos as a symbol of American hypocrisy and racism.