On America Street in Charleston’s East Side neighborhood, Joe is the owner of a small corner store–the heart of an old, but slowly disappearing Black community. Almost half of all African-Americans trace their origins back to Charleston, a city that is still haunted by its slave-owning past. Despite the many challenges of being Black in America, Joe is determined to stay hopeful and to resist losing his neighborhood to the rising forces of gentrification. Directed and produced by Idrissou Mora-Kpai, AMERICA STREET captures three months in 2015 of Joe’s daily struggles set against the backdrop of racist violence in the city, from the killing of Walter Scott by a police officer to the Emanuel Church massacre by a young white supremacist.

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