Black History Month (February 2007)

Celebrate Black History Month by using media from the library to learn more about the history of African Americans in the United States. Check out videos, CD-ROMs, non-fiction audio, and pictures and posters about African Americans.

For the kids you know, try children's stories about African Americans (use the Fiction & Literature Media Finder, select youth under audience, check prose and choose African Americans under types of characters). Check out titles like Deborah Hopkinson's Sweet Clara and the freedom quilt, Faith Ringgold's Tar beach or, for older readers, Walter Dean Myers' Monster or Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, not Buddy.

The Movies & TV Programs (fiction video) Media Finder features many videos with African American characters. We have dramas about the historical experience of slavery in the U.S., ranging from Alex Haley's ground-breaking TV mini-series Roots to Steven Spielberg's film about the Amistad rebellion. Or try a film adaptation of African American literature, such as The color purple or A raisin in the sun. Or try one of Spike Lee's films, like Inside man or Malcolm X.

Why not browse for media on African Americans and...

Art

Business and Economics

Dance and Theater

Education

Film and Television

History and Politics

Language, Literature and the Press

Music

Religion

Sports

Women's Studies

Interested in local African American history? We have several videos on African Americans in Muncie. There are also many images in the Other Side of Middletown Photographs, a collection in the Digital Media Repository. The DMR also features back issues of The Muncie Times, Muncie's African American newspaper.