'Step,' 'I Called Him Morgan,' among doc nominees for NAACP Image Awards

Whose Streets?, Tell Them We Are Rising, and The Rape of Recy Taylor also contending

Step is jumping back into the awards mix.

The film by Amanda Lipitz -- about a step dance team at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women -- earned an NAACP Image Awards nomination Monday for best documentary film. Step focuses on three high school seniors who negotiate the pressures of getting into college, all while working hard to win the city's most prestigious step competition, 

The girls give me such hope. I cry when I talk about them.

--Amanda Lipitz on the team members in her documentary Step

Step's competition for the NAACP Image Award includes I Called Him Morgan, directed by Kasper Collin. It tells the story of jazz musician Lee Morgan who achieved great renown before his untimely and tragic death at age 33.

Documentary veteran Stanley Nelson earned a nomination for his film Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities. Nelson has chronicled the African-American experience and the Civil Rights Movement in Freedom Riders and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.

"Step" director Amanda Lipitz participates in a Q&A following an IDA screening of her film. Los Angeles, October 12, 2017. Photo by Matt Carey

Kasper Collin, director of "I Called Him Morgan," answers questions after a screening of his film in Los Angeles. November 8, 2017. Photo by Matt Carey

Stanley Nelson, director of "Tell Them We Are Rising" at the Sundance Film Festival where the film premiered. Park City, Utah, January 24, 2017. Photo by Matt Carey

Also earning an Image Award nomination was Nancy Buirski's film The Rape of Recy Taylor, about an African-American woman who was gang raped by young white men in Alabama in 1944. She found the courage to pursue justice against formidable odds, with the assistance of Rosa Parks.

A more contemporary story of justice and civil rights -- Sabaah Folayan's Whose Streets? -- also claimed a nomination. The director tells the story of protests that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri after the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, at the hands of a white police officer. Folayan also explores the media narratives that grew out of news coverage of the unrest, which she argues distorted the lived experience of people on the ground.

"Whose Streets?" director Sabaah Folayan at the world premiere of her film at the Sundance Film Festival. Park City, Utah, January 19, 2017. Photo by Matt Carey

Nancy Buirski, director of "The Rape of Recy Taylor," participates in a Q&A following an IDA screening of her film. Los Angeles, October 25, 2017. Photo by Matt Carey

In the Best Documentary - Television category, the NAACP Image Awards nominated five programs:

>Birth of a Movement (PBS)
>Black Love (OWN)
>The 44th President: In His Own Words (History)
>The Defiant Ones (HBO)
>What the Health (AUM Films and Media + First Spark Media)

The NAACP Image Awards will be presented in Pasadena, California on January 15, 2018. Cable network TV One will broadcast the ceremony.