On Thursday, February 29th the Library will be hosting a Black Heritage Film Screening in front of the library fireplace from 2-6pm.

The film screening will feature a curated selection of "race films" -- a Black-oriented film genre produced by independent filmmakers between the early 1900s and the early 1950s.

For context, over 150 independent film companies "endeavored to make, distribute, and exhibit race movies... crossing all manner of genres and that, oriented to and shown largely in segregated movie theatres, featured all-black casts. ...[An] implicit challenge to black disenfranchisement, such movies engaged with the spectrum of African American life and experience... comprised a range of visual and narrative styles, artisanal modes of production, and a fluid division of labor, these early productions bore traces of what would later become an African American cinematic tradition." (Michael T. Martin quoted in Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking, 2008).