Join the Trenton Library in Celebrating Black History Month with special movie nights, where kids and adults can watch historical and entertaining movies about everything from the Civil Rights movement to America’s first Black balerina.

“I was trying to think about ways to implement black history month programming that didn’t involve large crowds,” said Eboni Love, Youth Services Library Associate. Love pitched having a movie night every Thursday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. during February. “What better way to implement a program that children would be interested in and that we could tie literacy into as well,” Love said. 

Love then hand-picked four different movies for the event. The first movie, “March On!,” played last week. It was an animated feature focused on Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights activists. On February 17, “Ruby Bridges,” a film focused on the first African American child attending an all-white school in Louisiana will be featured. Finally, on February 27, the library will feature Love’s favorite movie, “Cinderella (The Brandy Version).”

“If you come into the library, you’ll often hear me singing one of the songs either from the original (Cinderella) or this version…Up until recently, we didn’t see black princesses… It’s just a beautiful story, and it represents a lot of cultures, and I love it personally. I think the children that come to watch it will love it as well,” Love said.

Tonight, however, the library is showing “A Ballerina’s Tale,” a documentary on Misty Copeland, the first African American woman to break barriers within the ballet industry… “And we have a lot of books about her,” Love said.

Throughout the month, the TFPL creates different ways to include the community in Black History Month with arts and crafts showcasing historical figures like Louis Armstrong and Garrett Morgan, the inventor of traffic light.

“I want to let the children know our story doesn’t start or end with the civil rights movement or slavery. We point them to the African American History Month display, which not only includes things about civil rights, it includes special stories about African American children, adults, the continent of Africa, and its countries. It is a where we came from story,” Love said. For more information, check out this Black History Month flyer.

Library Director Rebecca FrancoMartin explained that the library encourages the community to come and see what they can learn about black history in Trenton, across the nation and the world. “We feel that Black History Month is a time to commemorate experiences and accomplishments of the black community while promoting awareness of civil rights, empowering the community to share their stories, and striving for greater equality,” said FrancoMartin. “The way to do that is to educate, and so the library provides programming to do that.”