Black Public Media unveils 100th ‘AfroPoP’ film
Black Public Media’s Peabody Award-winning series AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange presents its 100th film this fall as the Season 18 finale. Paradox: Echoes of Reform & the Minneapolis Police, directed by 20-time regional Emmy winner Daniel Pierce Bergin and produced by Minnesota PBS, premieres Monday, November 9 on the PBS App and PBS.org, with local broadcast times listed by station.
The documentary examines 150 years of power, politics and policing in Minneapolis, a city long marked by police misconduct. It connects that history to the 2020 murder of George Floyd, showing how mayoral decisions, police union influence and activism from Black, Latinx and Indigenous communities shaped the environment for recent events.
Bergin, who also serves as executive producer and WEM endowed director of history at Minnesota PBS, is a 20-time regional Emmy award winner. He stated that George Floyd’s murder did not occur in a historical vacuum and expressed hope that Paradox will deepen national conversations about policing, accountability and meaningful reform.
Acclaimed historian Dr. Yohuru Williams guides the film as on-screen narrator and advisor. He holds the titles of distinguished university chair, professor of history and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, where his scholarship centers on the intersections of history, democracy, civil rights and public memory.
Season 18 also includes Listen to Me, a documentary on the nation’s Black maternal health crisis by Kanika Harris and Stephanie Etienne, and This World Is Not My Own, the first feature-length film to premiere exclusively on BPM’s YouTube channel, which profiles the late self-taught Black folk artist Nellie Mae Rowe and was made by Opendox filmmakers Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell.
Black Public Media was able to present Season 18 despite a $1.8 million budget cut resulting from Congress’s 2025 rescission of public media funding.
AfroPoP remains the only U.S.-based public media program devoted solely to independent documentaries and narrative films about contemporary life, art and culture across the African diaspora. Filmmakers whose work has appeared in the series include Joel Zito Araújo, Blitz Bazawule, Yaba Blay, Joe Brewster, Barron Claiborne, Rebecca Richman Cohen, Luchina Fisher, Bobbito Garcia, Alain Gomis, Thomas Allen Harris, Terence Nance, Raoul Peck, Sam Pollard, Michèle Stephenson, Anisia Uzeyman, Marco Williams and Saul Williams.
Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of Black Public Media and executive producer of AfroPoP, said the milestone film challenges Americans to confront the past in order to understand the present and called it a testament to the series’ commitment to overlooked stories about the Black experience.
Minnesota PBS produced the film as part of its mission to enrich lives and strengthen communities through media. The organization has provided trusted programming and educational resources for nearly 70 years across broadcast, digital platforms and community initiatives in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas.
Black Public Media has supported visionary content creators and distributed stories about the global Black experience for more than 45 years. Its programs have earned five Emmys, 10 Peabodys, five Anthem Awards, 14 additional Emmy nominations and an Oscar nomination while addressing historical and systemic barriers to Black storytelling.
