Peter Gilbert’s documentary commemorates the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, tracing the events that led up to the desegregation of schools and exploring the ground we’ve traversed since the collapse of "separate but equal." In interviews and original footage, Gilbert, the producer of Hoop Dreams, looks to the people who took the first steps toward equal education, most notably Barbara Johns, who at 16 organized a student strike in Farmville, Virginia, and persuaded the NAACP to accept the case. The film’s most stirring moment comes after the Supreme Court decision, when Farmville’s county board shuts its schools for five years rather than integrate them.

Although the pre-decision section lacks intensity, the emotional pitch is upped in the ruling’s aftermath, with grim footage of lynched effigies and testimonies of threats and shootings. Gilbert also films present-day high-school classrooms. "I don’t want to say I don’t care," says one black girl about the history of the ruling, "but it doesn’t really affect me." Her school is primarily black; the white students have been enrolling in private schools. Whether her statement attests to how far we’ve come or to the dangers of taking that for granted is as ambiguous as the title phrase.