The ‘Sinners’ Movie Syllabus

The ‘Sinners’ Movie Syllabus is a curated educational resource inspired by the 2025 film ‘Sinners,’ directed by Ryan Coogler. This syllabus delves into the multifaceted historical, cultural, and social contexts depicted in the film, providing audiences with a deeper understanding of its layered narratives. Set in Mississippi in 1932, ‘Sinners’ explores themes such as racial violence, spiritual traditions, Black speculative fiction, and the complexities of African American life during the Jim Crow era.

Drawing inspiration from the #CharlestonSyllabus—a crowdsourced educational resource that emerged in response to the 2015 Charleston church shooting—the ‘Sinners’ Movie Syllabus seeks to foster a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of the film. By examining these elements through scholarly and popular resources, the syllabus will enrich the viewing experience and foster critical discussions.

Historical Context: The Mississippi Delta & Jim Crow South

• Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky – Free Press, 1997
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois – A.C. Mcclurg & Co., 1903
• The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward – Oxford University Press, 1955
• Lynching in the New South by Fitzhugh Brundage – University of Illinois Press, 1993
• Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow by Neil McMillen – University of Illinois Press,1989
• American Congo :The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta by Nan Elizabeth Woodruff – Harvard University Press, 2003
• May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem by Imani Perry – University of North Carolina Press, 2018
• Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 by Paul Ortiz – University of California Press, 2005
• The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity by James C. Cobb – Oxford University Press, 1992
• A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape by W. Ralph Eubanks, Timber Press, 2021
• The Mississippi Encyclopedia Edited by Ted Ownby, Charles Reagan Wilson, Ann J. Abadie, Odie Lindsey, and James G. Thomas Jr. – University of Mississippi Press, 2017
• Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon – Doubleday, 2008
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist – Basic Books, 2014

African American Christianity and Spirituality

• Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne P. Chireau – University of California Press, 2006
• Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald – University of Illinois Press, 2012
• Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham – Harvard University Press, 1993
• Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between the Wars by Mary Beth Mathews – University of Alabama Press, 2017
• Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African American Religion in the South by Stephen Angell – University of Tennessee Press, 2002
• Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World by Anthea Butler – University of North Carolina Press, 2007
• The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates Jr. – Penguin Press, 2021
• New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration by Judith Weisenfeld – New York University Press, 2017
• Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations by Sharla Fett – University of North Carolina Press, 2002
• Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age by Jerma Jackson – University of North Carolina Press, 2004

 Blues Music: Origins, Evolution, and Propagation

• Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters by Brian Bisesi – University of Mississippi Press, 2024
• Making Music: The Banjo in a Southern Appalachian County by William C. Allsbrook, Jr. – University of Mississippi Press, 2023
• Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s by Harry Bolick and Stephen T. Austin – University of Mississippi Press, 2015
• Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta edited by Robert Sacré – University of Mississippi, 2018
• The Land Where the Blues Began by Alan Lomax – Pantheon Books, 1993
• Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka – William Morrow & Company, 1963

African American Art, Poetry, and Literature in the Jim Crow Era

• The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes – Alfred A. Knopf, 1926
• Cane by Jean Toomer – Boni & Liveright, 1923
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston – J.B. Lippincott, 1937

The Great Migration and Great Depression

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson – Random House, 2010
• When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson – W.W. Norton & Company, 2005
• Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration by James R. Grossman – University of Chicago Press, 1989
• Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis by Keona Ervin – University Press of Kentucky, 2017
• A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue by Harvard Sitkoff – Oxford University Press, 1978
• The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 by Robert McElvaine – Three Rivers Press, 1993
• Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class by Robin D.G. Kelley – Free Press, 1996
• A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn – Harvard University Press, 2005
• Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression by Robin D.G. Kelly – University of North Carolina Press, 1990

African Americans in the Military

• We Return Fighting: WWI and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity edited by edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill – National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2019
• Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era by Chad L. Williams, University of North Carolina Press, 2010
• Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I by Adriane Lentz-Smith – Harvard University Press, 2009
• The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War by Chad L. Williams – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023
• ​​Harlem’s Hell Fighters: The African-American 369th Infantry in World War I by Stephen L. Harris – University of Nebraska Press, 2005

Gender Dynamics and Social Structures

• At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance by Danielle L. McGuire – Vintage, 2011
• Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Race and Lynching by Crystal Feimster – Harvard University of Press, 2011
• Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N. Blain – University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018
• Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 by Glenda Gilmore – University of North Carolina Press, 1996
• Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks – South End Press, 1981
• Ida B. the Queen by Michelle Duster – Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2021
• Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain – Beacon Press, 2021

Resistance and Early Civil Rights Activism

• Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggles for Civil Rights by Genna Rae McNeil – University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983
• To Lift Every Voice, The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement by Patricia Sullivan – The New Press, 2009
• Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 by Glenda Gilmore – W.W. Norton, 2009
• The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change by Aldon D. Morris – Free Press, 1986
• Nonviolence Before King: The Politics of Being and the Black Freedom Movement by Anthony C. Siracusa – UNC Press, 2021
• #BuffaloSyllabus – African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS)

Black Horror and Vampire Lore

• The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction by Jerry Rafiki Jenkins – The Ohio State University Press, 2019
• Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor – Repeater Books, 2019
• Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror by Kinitra Brooks – Rutgers University Press, 2017

Educational Resources and Pedagogical Approaches

• Prison Abolition Syllabus – African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS)
• Learning for Justice Classroom Resources – Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

Music

• Recordings of Bobby Rush
• Recordings of Robert Johnson
• Recordings of Muddy Waters
• Recordings of Bessie Smith
• Sinners Original Motion Picture Score

Films

• Mudbound (2017)
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
• Daughters of the Dust (1991)
• Eve’s Bayou (1997)
• Get Out (2017)

Series

• Watchmen (HBO)
• Lovecraft Country (HBO)
• The 1619 Project (Hulu)

Websites

• Charleston Syllabus–African American Intellectual History Society
• Black Past
• Southern Spaces
• Southern Foodways Alliance
• Center for the Study of Southern Culture (University of Mississippi)
• Mississippi Encyclopedia Online
• B. King Museum
• Delta Blues Museum

Jemar Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the Church’s Complicity in Racism, How to Fight Racism. and How to Fight Racism: Young Reader’s Edition. His latest book, The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance, was published in 2024. He is also a Professor of History at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville. Jemar has been a co-host of the “Pass the Mic” podcast since its inception seven years ago. His writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New York Times, among others. He is a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN’s New Day program. He speaks nationwide on the topics of racial justice, U.S. history and Christianity.

Keisha N. Blain, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and Class of 2022 Carnegie Fellow, is Professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University. She is an award-winning historian of the 20th century United States with broad interests and specializations in African American History, the modern African Diaspora, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is the author and editor of eight books, including Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).