February is Black History Month, a time to reflect and celebrate the innumerable contributions Black communities have made in the United States and beyond. Following this year’s Black History Month theme of “Black Resistance,” Fenton’s Black Employee Resource Group (BERG) has put together a robust list of its members’ favorite content celebrating Black experiences and stories. It is our hope that these selections will allow you to learn more about Black communities and find ways to honor the talent, contributions and sacrifices they allow all of us the privilege to inherit. And in this moment, as policies are being proposed to erase and rewrite Black history and experiences, it’s more important than ever to share the political, cultural, and social contributions Black leaders have made in the U.S. and the world at large.
Films/Documentaries:
- A Huey P. Newton Story, directed by Spike Lee
- Daughters of the Dust, directed by Julie Dash
- Hidden Figures, directed by Theodore Melfi
- If Beale Street Could Talk, directed by Barry Jenkins
- Life, directed by Ted Damme and Eddie Murphy
- Little, directed by Tina Gordon and Issa Rae
- Mo’ Better Blues, directed by Spike Lee
- Sarafina!, directed by Darrell Roodt
- The Black Power Mixtape, directed by Göran Olsson
- The Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg
- The Help, directed by Tate Taylor
- The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, directed by Yoruba Richen
- The Summer of Soul, directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
- The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
Podcasts:
- Black Cowboys
- Black Girl Gone: A True Crime Podcast
- Code Switch
- GirlTrek’s Black History Bootcamp
- Noire Histoir
- Stuck with Damon Young
- The Read
- The Reading Black Girls Podcast
Books:
- Barracoon, by Zora Neale Hurston
- Becoming, by Michelle Obama
- Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood, by Donald Bogle
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
- Kindred, by Octavia Butler
- Makeda, by Randall Robinson
- Seven Days in June, by Tia Williams
- The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
- The Prophets, by Robert Jones Jr.
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
- The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
- The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson
- When Washington Was In Vogue, A Love Story, by Edward Christopher Williams
- Within These Wicked Walls, by Lauren Blackwood