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Primary Sources: The Black History Hidden in Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners'

A deep dive into the Black history embedded in Ryan Coogler's magnum opus.

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Michael Harriot
Apr 29, 2025
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Warner Bros.

Long before Ryan Coogler chose 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi, as the location for his genre-bending film Sinners, someone else had already set a horror movie in the rural Delta town located in Coahoma County, Mississippi …

America.

“Clarksdale has the meanest of reputations,” the editor of the Clarksdale Press Register wrote on Jan 16, 1926. “T…

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