Amend: The Fight for America (Season 1)

Amend: The Fight for America (2021) is a Netflix documentary series you can watch online on iFILM. Will Smith hosts this six-episode look at the 14th Amendment — the post-Civil War constitutional clause promising equal protection that Americans have been litigating and redefining ever since 1868.

Each episode mixes archival footage, historical reenactments, and staged readings of primary sources — court opinions, letters, personal testimonies — performed by an ensemble that includes Mahershala Ali, Pedro Pascal, Samuel L. Jackson, Sterling K. Brown, Laverne Cox, and Samira Wiley, among many others. Directors Reinaldo Marcus Green and Kenny Leon let the original documents carry the weight.

What separates it from a standard history doc is the effect of watching working actors speak real words that real people once risked their lives to say. Stream Amend: The Fight for America online on iFILM.