The New Black

Directed By Yoruba Richen

The historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland provided a view into how the African American community grapples with gay rights.

  • ABOUT
  • BIO
The New Black is an award-winning documentary that tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar—the black church and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. The New Black takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.

Yoruba Richen is a Peabody award-winning documentary filmmaker who was awarded the Trailblazer award by Black Public Media. Her work has been featured on multiple outlets, including Netflix, MSNBC, Peacock and FX/Hulu. Her film, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks was honored by the Television Academy. Other recent work include the Emmy-nominated films  American Reckoning, How It Feels to Be Free; The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show and Green Book: Guide to Freedom. Her film, The Killing of Breonna Taylor won an NAACP Image Award.  Yoruba’s other work include directing an episode of the award-winning series Black and Missing for HBO and High on the Hog for Netflix.  Yoruba is the Founding Director of the Documentary Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.