I Am Not Your Negro

CTL-E-6106 · Work · film · 2016–2017

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07326 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6106.

I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 documentary film directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House. In 1979 Baldwin wrote to his literary agent describing the book, which would recount the lives and successive assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin died in 1987 without completing it, leaving only thirty pages, and the unfinished manuscript was entrusted to Peck by Baldwin's estate. Peck built the film exclusively around Baldwin's words, matching them with archival footage of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and connecting those struggles to present-day movements. Samuel L. Jackson narrates Baldwin's text. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2016, and opened in the United States on February 3, 2017. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards and won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. The Museum of Modern Art describes it as a meditation on what it means to be Black in America, framed as a radical narration about race in America.

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no I Am Not Your Negro entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6106 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 21 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1746). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — National canon record under MEDIA-001; Baldwin-centered, not a Chicago record. Vital status: Work status: completed and released — premiered September 10, 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival, with U.S. theatrical release February 3, 2017 (Wikipedia and MoMA, accessed 2026-10-16); it remains in distribution via BFI Player and other services as of the 2026 access date. STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Wikipedia (accessed 2026-10-16): 95-minute running time; premiered September 10, 2016 (TIFF); U.S. release February 3, 2017. Baldwin left 30 completed pages of Remember This House at his death in 1987 (Magnolia trailer copy and MoMA/BFI accounts, accessed 2026-10-16). MEDIA: photo HELD (I Am Not Your Negro theatrical release poster (Magnolia Pictures, 2016) — specific image to be verified in a later PHOTO-001 pass; no license claimed. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6106-i-am-not-your-negro.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (no address-based map spec earned). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (No address-based map spec earned under the packet standard for this record.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Relationships

• James Baldwin — authored by
  Credits list James Baldwin and Raoul Peck as writers and the film as based on Baldwin's Remember This House; BFI and MoMA state the film is built exclusively around Baldwin's words from the manuscript entrusted to Peck by the estate. Baldwin Person record CTL-E-5695 exists in the graph. authored_by is proposed on the writing credit; related_to is the fallback if assembly judges a posthumous source-text credit a stretch.

Sources

• British Film Institute, BFI Player, "Watch I Am Not Your Negro online" (accessed 2026-10-16) — Peck's documentary reconstructs Baldwin's unfinished manuscript; 1979 letter describing Remember This House; lives and assassinations of Evers, Malcolm X and King; manuscript entrusted to Peck; narration by Samuel L. Jackson — https://player.bfi.org.uk/rentals/film/watch-i-am-not-your-negro-2016-online?play-trailer (primary source · build store)
• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Oscars newsletter, "Black History Month: Films to Watch in Observance" (accessed 2026-10-16) — 2016 documentary centered on Remember This House, directed by Raoul Peck, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature — https://newsletter.oscars.org/what-to-watch/post/black-history-month-films-to-watch-in-observance (primary source · build store)
• Museum of Modern Art, "I Am Not Your Negro. 2016. Directed by Raoul Peck" (accessed 2026-10-16) — 2016, USA, 95 minutes, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson; built exclusively around Baldwin's words; December 2016 Maysles run ahead of February 2017 theatrical release — https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10648 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "I Am Not Your Negro" (accessed 2026-10-16) — directed by Raoul Peck; written by James Baldwin and Raoul Peck; premiered September 10, 2016 at TIFF; U.S. release February 3, 2017; 95 minutes; nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards; won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Not_Your_Negro (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6106 · Combined Graph record U-07326 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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