I have always loved the movies.

Among my fondest childhood memories are trips with Aunt Shirley and Aunt Shelley

to the Old King's Plaza Theatre on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

There I left the borough behind to explore galaxies far, far away,

and found home when I found the lost ark before traipsing through the temple of doom.

And when I was old enough to go to the movies by myself, I always tried to do the right thing and not be a menace to society.

So I stuck to house parties where I had a little bit of juice.

Because I wasn't just coming to America, I was straight out of Brooklyn.

And after my school days at Morehouse,

I spent more than a few dead presidents waiting to exhale on a Friday,

chasing a love Jones, but settling for some soul food with my best man at the barbershop.

So it should come as no surprise that my favorite class to teach is African American history

through film.

My film class covers the black experience from slavery through the present.

Once a week we meet at a theater on the outskirts of campus and watch a major motion picture.

The last time I taught the class, we started with 12 years a slave and ended with moonlight.

And in between we screened everything from Amistad and

glory to fences and Fruitvale Station. These movies make the black experience come alive,

adding depth and dimension to the famous and the forgotten, to the extraordinary and the everyday.

They help students imagine the seemingly unimaginable,

generating empathy by capturing and conveying deep emotion.

As much as my students enjoy these films, they alone are not enough to teach them to think critically about popular

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