Salon's D. Watkins talks to Yance Ford, director of the acclaimed documentary "Strong Island," about race, murder and justice. The film is nominated for an Academy Award and documents the journey Ford's family went through after the death of his older brother William Jr., an unarmed African-American killed by a white auto mechanic who was then made the prime suspect in his own murder case.

Ford shows how his family escaped the Jim Crow South by moving to New York City, and then again to Long Island, for what they thought would be a better life. Once there, they uncovered the struggles of being black in suburbia and learned how New York's justice system mirrors everything they thought they'd left in the South.