Film screening and discussion of Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley's recently-restored documentary, I Heard it Through the Grapevine (1982). The film follows acclaimed author and public intellectual James Baldwin as he revisits the sites of American South that he first reported on in 1957. Throughout the film, Baldwin meets with fellow artists, activists, and educators who take stock of the Civil Rights Movement and ongoing Black Freedom struggles and address the backlash against the gains of those movements.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Bill V. Mullen (Purdue University), author of the biography, James Baldwin: Living in the Fire (2019) and, alongside Dr. Jeanelle K. Hope, co-author of The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition (2024). 

This event is free and open to the public.