February is Black History Month and the University of Utah’s Black Cultural Center has many events planned including a partnered event with the J. Willard Marriott Library about books & movies. That event will feature “Meligha Garfield (director of the Black Cultural Center) and Sara Cody (program coordinator at the Black Cultural Center) as they debate the best of the best in books and movies.”

In addition, Joni Clayton has gathered the following titles available through the library. All titles listed are available for free for current University of Utah students, staff, and faculty.

Film recommendations:

Black Art: In the Absence of Light

At the heart of this feature documentary is the groundbreaking Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibition curated by the late African American artist and scholar David Driskell.

Booker T. Washington Freedom Trail: The Spirit of Black Higher Education

This program shows how Booker T. Washington advocated for higher education for African Americans and finds out what’s on Washington’s trail of iron-willed determination that can be useful to us today.

Go Tell It On the Mountain

This acclaimed motion picture adaptation of James Baldwin’s celebrated novel is a gripping story of violence and desire, of tenderness and compassion, that lays bare the sufferings and aspirations of three generations of an African-American family.

I Am Not Your Negro

An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, this film explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.

John Lewis: Good Trouble

An intimate account of legendary U.S. Representative John Lewis’ life, legacy and more than 60 years of extraordinary activism.

John Wideman

This program focuses on the author of Sent for You Yesterday, Damballah, and Hiding Place, the man who, perhaps better than any other, epitomizes the painful split between middle-class blacks and the black urban underclass

Romeo is Bleeding

A documentary film following Donte Clark, a young poet in Richmond, CA, a community that struggles with gun violence stemming from a turf war spanning across multiple generations.  Donte transcends the violence in his hometown by writing poetry about his experiences.

White Scripts and Black Supermen: Black Masculinities in Comic Books

A valuable and colorful examination of 40 years of changing representations of Black masculinity in a significant area of popular culture – comic books.