Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's 1992 Malcolm X, a biopic of the African-American activist.
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By Olivia B. Waxman
January 31, 2020

As February’s Black History Month observance rolls around, classrooms across the United States will turn their lesson plans to the African-American past — but the classroom isn’t the only place where that learning can happen.

In addition to recent high-profile additions to the canon of movies about black history, like Harriet and Marshall, Hollywood history is rich with films that make fitting watching for Black History Month. Below, Jacqueline Stewart — host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies and the network’s first black host — offers, in her own words, six suggestions of films to watch for insights into the black experience. They comprise fictional features, documentary films and even one “home movie,” and together tell an important story.

“It’s important to recognize ways in which male and female black filmmakers from different backgrounds have developed their own style to get at this shared concern for trying to tell the truth about the African-American experience,” she says, “and to see film as a tool for doing that, and not relying on other people to tell our story.”

Within Our Gates (1920)

Where to Watch: Library of Congress Youtube Channel, Amazon Prime, fuboTV, Kanopy,

George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute (1937)

Where to Watch: The U.S. National Archives’ YouTube channel.

Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class (1968)

Publicity still of director and actor William Greaves from his Muhammad Ali documentary <i>Ali the Man: Ali the Fighter</i> (1975)
John Kisch Archive—Getty Images

Where to Watch: American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Illusions (1982)

Where to Watch: Kanopy

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Malcolm X (1992)

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy, Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube

Eve’s Bayou (1997)

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, MaxGo (Cinemax), Microsoft, Vudu, YouTube

Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com.

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