The Legacy of Incarceration with The W.E.B. Du Bois Center

Friday, February 13, 2026 | Great Barrington, MA | 7pm

In conjunction with the premiere of the Scottsboro Boys Traveling Exhibit, the W. E. B. Du Bois Freedom Center also presents a screening of The Alabama Solution at The Triplex Cinema. Directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, the documentary focuses on a separate but related chapter in American legal history, examining how deeply flawed prosecutions in Alabama gave rise to a strategic legal response that would go on to reshape constitutional law.

While the Scottsboro Boys Traveling Exhibit documents the wrongful prosecution of nine Black teenagers in 1930s Alabama and the racial terror embedded in the Jim Crow justice system, The Alabama Solution traces how attorneys and advocates confronted systemic injustice through the courts—developing legal arguments that expanded due process protections and altered how constitutional rights are enforced nationwide. Together, the exhibit and the film approach injustice from different angles: one through lived experience and historical record, the other through the evolution of legal strategy and precedent.

Presented side by side during opening week, the film screening situates The Alabama Solution within a broader conversation about racial inequality, institutional failure, and the long struggle to hold the American legal system accountable to its own principles. Reservations are required for this free public program, part of the Du Bois Freedom Center’s February programming marking Black History Month and the birthday of W. E. B. Du Bois, and reflecting the Center’s ongoing commitment to education, public scholarship, and community dialogue.