The truth is that the intensity of his surviving relatives’ emotions is so striking in Yance’s project that Strong Island would be a gripping film even if William hadn’t died at the hands of a white person whom a group of his peers decided not hold accountable for it. What Yance was able to do so well is narrate the story of his family — from his parents' first meeting in the Jim Crow South to their move to the suburbs of Long Island where William was killed, and then to the present — so that no moment was less significant than the other at shaping them into the people they are today. That their journey is as much sentimental as it is geographical and sociopolitical is brilliant.