by Lisa Kennedy,
Television networks and streamers have gotten wise to the fact that the stories of Black life in America require a year-round commitment — on screen, on set and in executive offices. Even so, they continue to pay homage to Black History Month with business initiatives and with content. And February 2022 looks to be one of the most programmed Black History Months ever, with beloved movies, original offerings, fresh shorts and other content airing and streaming. Since the social justice protests of 2020, there is no turning back on amplifying, celebrating, honoring — just some of the verbs you’ll find on company websites — the Black American experience. Here are a few of the highlights in a month full of stories that matter.
Mark your calendars for these special programs
MATT PETIT/ABC
Actress and director Halle Berry
Soul of a Nation: Screen Queens Rising
Thursday, Feb. 3
ABC News presents the Soul of a Nation special Screen Queens Rising, about the history of Black actresses in Hollywood. Among the talents who reflect — and reflect on — the challenges and changes in the industry: Regina Hall, Tessa Thompson, Halle Berry, Debbie Allen and Marla Gibbs. Directly following Screen Queens, Soul of a Nation will air X/onerated, a look at the wrongful conviction of Muhammad Abdul Aziz, who was arrested, tried and convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. Aziz was exonerated in November 2021. It also streams on Hulu.
Eyes on the Prize
PBS will show the six episodes of canonical series Eyes on the Prize, which begins showing on the PBS Passport service Feb. 6 and then throughout the month. Henry Hampton and Blackside Productions’ powerful portrait of America’s civil rights movement remains a gold standard in coming to understand the years of resistance and insistence on voting rights and human rights. It also streams on PBS’ World Channel.
One Thousand Years of Slavery
Executive producers Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance’s four-part documentary series engages the saga of slavery in intimate and global ways. Interviewees — among them Sen. Cory Booker, actress Lorraine Toussaint and journalist Soledad O’Brien — share insights about the personal and familial impact of slavery. Now that’s how a power couple empowers.
The Loyola Project
Sixty years after Chicago’s Loyola University men’s basketball team took the NCAA tourney by storm, Loyola player Lucas Williamson looks at the legacy of that storied team and how the players and their coach challenged racial barriers and changed the face(s) of college basketball.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s America: An America ReFramed Special
Tuesdays, Feb. 15 and Feb. 22
We never tire of the lessons in compassion and activism civil rights legend Fannie Lou Hamer offered. First, join historian Keisha Blain, Hamer’s great-niece Monica Land and moderator and documentary maven Erika Dilday on Feb. 15 for an online, virtual conversation, Finding Your Voice Through Fannie Lou Hamer (go here for more). Plan to head afterward to your PBS station (Feb. 22) or the World Channel (Feb. 24) to watch the portrait of the Mississippi sharecropper turned human rights defender.
The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder
Wednesday, Feb. 23
To tease the James Brown anthem: Say it loud, they’re back and they’re Prouds. Yes, Disney Channel’s groundbreaking, much-celebrated series about Penny Proud, her fam and her posse of friends is getting a revival with The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.
BEN GABBE/GETTY IMAGES FOR PARAMOUNT NETWORK
A view of the Trayvon Martin mural in New York City.
Trayvon Martin: 10 Years Later
Saturday, Feb. 26, and Monday, Feb. 28
Gayle King anchors CBS Reports’ hour-long special about the ongoing reverberations of the 2012 killing of the 17-year-old. For many, Martin’s death marked the beginning of the social justice movement known as Black Lives Matter. There are fresh interviews with Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, who founded Mothers of the Movement, an organization for mothers who have lost children to gun violence or at the hands of police.
Amazon Prime: Celebrate Black Voices collection
The streamer’s Prime Insider does a nice job of pointing out a few high points from its Celebrate Black Voices collection, among them: director Barry Jenkins’s Best Picture winner Moonlight, as well as Underground Railroad, his agonizing limited series adaptation of novelist Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Continuing the prize theme, the streamer has also gathered the works of Sidney Poitier in a rich salute. Watch his history-making, Oscar-winning turn in Lilies of the Field, but also consider 1957’s Edge of the City, a film noir lauded for its depiction of the friendship between Poitier’s and John Cassavetes’ characters.
Don’t miss: I Am Not Your Negro
Raoul Peck has crafted an elegant and unique documentary about cultural titan James Baldwin and his unfinished book on Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Each was a friend; each was assassinated. Although he died in 1987, Baldwin remains a vivid, droll and frighteningly prescient observer of America’s bright ideals and too-often-dark practices.
Hulu: A mind-opening documentary about the Summer of Soul
Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised) is a not-to-be missed act of archival discovery and cultural recovery. In his knockout debut documentary, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Roots spins the tale of a thrilling musical gathering in Harlem that few but its musical guests and thousands of attendees remember. That the story of the six-weekend Harlem Cultural Festival in 1968 was nearly lost to neglect and disinterest on the part of gatekeepers is part of the story.
Black Film Archive: A must stop
Last month, the National Society of Film Critics recognized the Black Film Archive’s creator and curator, Maya Cade, with a Heritage Award for the archive, which introduces visitors to films made between 1915 and 1979 and where to find them. When you’re ready for a deeper dive, Cade’s ready for you. After you’ve watched Netflix’s August Wilson doc, Giving Voice, the Black Film Archive will hook you up with a link for theater maverick Woodie King Jr.’s 1978 documentary Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement. The archive will also reprise its 28 Films in 28 Days feast and has a Sidney Poitier tribute and collection in honor of the film — and justice — titan, who died Jan. 6.