Black History Month – MOVIES AND BOOKS
Grab a book, watch a movie, talk to your neighbors about their experiences. Educating yourself about the black experience will only increase your understanding and support for diversity, equity and inclusion.
BOOKS: RECOMMENDED READING. https://revolutionbooks.org/african-american-history
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
By Clint Smith
In this award-winning nonfiction book from 2021, poet, journalist, and teacher Clint Smith embarks on a harrowing journey across America, exploring a side of the country that we rarely see. How the Word Is Passed documents the story of American slavery and its impact on the present day, reckoning with a legacy that all too often is taught through obscured half-truths. Smith takes readers to places like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, where the founding father enslaved more than 400 people, and Louisiana’s Angola Prison, a maximum-security facility and former plantation named after the country from which most of its enslaved people were stolen. By reflecting on America’s violent past and offering a true accounting of the Black experience, Smith brings attention to the nation’s history in an effort to change our present.
Fire Next Time
By James Baldwin
No list of books about American culture is complete without a work by James Baldwin. Released in 1963, Fire Next Time contains two groundbreaking essays. The first, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” is a letter written to his 14-year-old nephew about the role of race and racism in American history. The second, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” explores the intersection of race and religion in America. Baldwin’s landmark work galvanized readers across the nation as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum. Today it stands as an indispensable examination of American race relations and a reckoning with the past, present, and future of our national identity.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
“A stinging indictment of slavery.”—NPR Books
“This book provides historical reference for the ways in which the enslavement of people for profit continues to impact and influence today’s institutions. A must‑read for everyone who has ever heard the statement, ‘But slavery is over! Why can’t they just get over it?’ or ‘Well, you know white people were slaves, too.’” —The Atlantic
MOVIES: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/important-films-about-the-black-experience/