As part of the ACLU of Michigan’s Black History Month celebration, we asked people on our staff to share their thoughts on a particular book, film, television show, or piece of music related to the Black experience in America that they’ve found to be especially moving, important or insightful. The response was spectacular, providing a host of far-flung suggestions for things others might want to read, view, or listen to, and, importantly, why they should do so. Below are some of the highlights that reveal much, both about the subjects being addressed and the values of the tremendously thoughtful people who work here. Enjoy, and learn!
Television: “Atlanta,” created by Donald Glover
Authentic representation of Black people by mass media is a rare thing. One brilliant exception is Donald Glover’s television series “Atlanta,” a surreal dark comedy that satirizes hip-hop culture during the 2010s. As someone who experienced that firsthand while in my early 20s, “Atlanta” is like an inside joke between me and my 10 closest friends from high school.
A show that leans into its absurdity with gleeful abandon (in one episode, an NBA player is involved in an altercation at a nightclub and flees in his luxury invisible car), it’s also one of the most realistic and nuanced portrayals of millennial Black American life.
My favorite episode, “Juneteenth,” follows Earn (Glover) as he attends his girlfriend’s mother’s party to network with Atlanta’s Black elite. The episode’s satire of the “Black Bourgeoisie” is sharp and detailed. Every shot feels intentional—in one scene, the camera lingers on a bartender standing beneath Norman Rockwell’s painting of Ruby Bridges. Seeing that painting, which has hung in my parents’ home for years, made the moment extremely personal, yet uncanny. From the music choices to the dialogue, to the subtle class and racial tensions, every element feels both hilarious and unsettling.
Glover said the thesis behind “Atlanta” is this: “How do we make people feel Black?” He achieved it. The show doesn’t just represent—it resonates. Watching the series felt like someone cracked open my world and completely captured my friends, my family, and my community—flaws, humor, and all. You can learn more about where you can watch it now here.
Daniel Jackson, digital strategist
Children’s Book: “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats
As a mother of young kids, much of my reading these days is focused on children’s books. One of my favorites is “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats. Keats is white, but the Caldecott Medal-winning book, first published in 1962, helped break new ground by being one of the first picture books to feature a Black main character, a little boy named Peter.
Taking place in a realistic, multicultural urban setting, the book has become a timeless classic. I've read it to all three of my kids (and my youngest would watch the movie version every day if I let him). I think what I love most about this book is the simplicity of the story, and the way it captures the wonder and magic children experience when merely playing in the snow. While I love kids' books that explicitly weave in values that I hold close, this one finds incredible power merely by depicting the delight of a kid being allowed to just be a kid. We aren't looking to Peter to carry the weight of an important lesson or to teach us anything profound. It is a really beautiful book.
Jennifer Keller, chief of staff
Nonfiction Book: “Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation,” by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger
American popular culture has generally sanitized chattel slavery and also portrayed its victims as hapless, docile imbeciles. The reality was quite the opposite. Anyone interested in reading the true history should consider starting with “Runaway Slaves,” an exhaustively researched book that effectively dispels stubbornly persistent myths about enslaved people who, in fact, showed incredible resilience, ingenuity and determination to be free through frequent rebellions and escapes from captivity.
The book, published in 2000, is also notable for the revealing insight it provides into the white slaveholders’ brutal reactions, which included the establishment of patrols to hunt down people who escaped, laying the foundation for a racist system of law enforcement that continues to this day.
For people who don’t enjoy reading, I’d recommend checking out the 2016 miniseries “Roots” (available on various platforms), based on Alex Haley’s groundbreaking 1976 novel. One scene in particular, which can be viewed here, provides what is probably the most accurate depiction available of that horrendous period.
Mark Fancher, Racial Justice Project staff attorney
Song: “Thieves in the Night,” by Black Star
This is my favorite song from 1998’s Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, one of the most impactful hip-hop albums ever made. Imagine Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye transformed into song -- that’s literally the concept. In five short minutes, Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) and Kweli weave together a mind-boggling array of pressing social topics.
As one critic observed, Bey and Kweli, in a seamless flow, address issues as disparate as “inauthenticity, problems in the military, materialism, the state of the prison system, gun control, the mistreatment of artists in the music business, and of course, the racism that fuels nearly every aspect of life in the United States.”
It is an entire textbook captured within a single song. As a Muslim, this song is especially meaningful because Bey is one of the first Muslim rappers I’d heard.
Ramis J. Wadood, staff attorney
Film: “Sgt. Rutledge” starring Woody Strode
Watching TV one day as a kid growing up in a rural area that had no Black people, I experienced Woody Strode’s epic performance in 1960’s ”Sgt. Rutledge” as a revelation. Portraying a cavalryman wrongly accused of raping a young white woman and then killing her and her father, he literally towers above everyone else as he stands in a military courtroom, ramrod straight and unflinching. He is a monument to positive masculinity and, as the story unfolds, bravery and virtue, crushing Stepin Fetchit stereotypes into the dust through the sheer power of his screen presence, and creating a whole new Western-film architype in the process: The Black hero.
Strode, a world-class decathlete while a student at UCLA and one of the first Black men to play in the NFL during the modern era, said this about his role in the film directed by John Ford:
"It had dignity. John Ford put classic words in my mouth... You never seen a Negro come off a mountain like John Wayne before. I had the greatest Glory Hallelujah ride across the Pecos River that any Black man ever had on the screen. And I did it myself. I carried the whole Black race across that river."
Curt Guyette, editor at large
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