All Richmond Public Library locations will be closed February 17th for Presidents' Day.

Black History Month

The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans, and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people.
This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the creation of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, which was the first Black union to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor.

ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE AND HISTORY®

Weekend Film Fest: A Spike Lee Joint
Celebrate Black History Month with films by talented, prolific director and producer, Spike Lee.
West End Branch Saturday February 15th and Sunday February 16th.

Saturday, February 15

Cover of the movie School Daze
10am – School Daze (1988)
Rated R
Spike Lee (who also stars as Half-Pint) injects musical numbers into this tale of discord at an all-black college.
12:15pm – Do The Right Thing (1989)
Rated R
Racial tensions grow in a Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the summer while everyone tries to cope with the heat. Spike Lee received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay.
cover for Get On The Bus directed by Spike Lee
2:30pm – Get On The Bus (1996)
Rated R
A disparate group of African-American men travel by bus to Washington, DC for the Million Man March.

Sunday, February 16

Cover of Crooklyn directed by Spike Lee
1pm – Crooklyn (1994)
Rated R
Spike Lee’s vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school teacher, her stubborn jazz musician husband and their five kids living in Brooklyn in 1973.
Cover of Inside Man directed by Spike Lee
3pm – Inside Man (2006)
Rated R
A police detective, a bank robber, and a high-power broker enter high-stakes negotiations after the criminal’s brilliant heist spirals into a hostage situation.

Upcoming Black History Month Events

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