Slaughter Sheep Discussion Questions

It was around 7 on a hot August afternoon in 1965, in a Los Angeles south central neighborhood; when a twenty-one year old man named Marquette Frye was on his way home after a few beers to drop off his Brother. Not far from his house they were pulled over by an officer Lee Minkus who then proceeded to give Marquette Frye a field sobriety test. As Mr. Frye stumbled along the curb his brother Ronald Frye walked a few blocks over to the Frye residence and shortly returned with their mother. As the events unfolded the number of curious onlookers grew.

The mother’s initial reaction was to scold the young man for driving in such an inebriated state to which he responded by assuring her that he was, in fact, sober. The mother knew that he wasn’t

The film showcases the conditions in which the African American community lived in as kids played with rocks and whatever they could find in areas that look as if they had been through a war. The whole neighborhood is in a state of disrepair after the riots and the residents seem defeated, acquiescing to what their community has become. Stan earns an honest living working at a slaughter house where they seem to mainly slaughter sheep. Feeling trapped at a dead end job he loathes, Stan spends his free time looking for ways to better his situation but every attempt seems to be in vain as they all lead him back to where he started, an inevitable conclusion for an honest African American in the 60s and 70s. Every failed attempt he accepts and almost anticipates. An honest African American man could not make much of himself in this country at the time as if hindered at every turn to break through a glass ceiling made of iron. Meanwhile, his less than honest neighbors that are most likely unemployed, proposition him to kill a man for good money. The men are sporting new and stylish garments and drive a nice car, as they speak to him; an honest man who works perhaps 12 hours a day; he is wearing an old and dirty wife beater. Many at the time had to resort to crime to have any upward mobility but were confined to the town they lived in, thus these areas couldn’t grow and prosper; instead, they digressed into more poverty and