On Wednesday, February 21, the Fulbright Educational Advising Center marked Black History Month by hosting a special event: a screening of the 2014 Oscar-nominated feature „Selma”, which recreates a seminal moment in Black Americans’ struggle for equal rights – the Martin Luther King-led march from Selma to Montgomery -, followed by a discussion on the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Our guest speaker for this event was U.S. Fulbright Grantee Jasmine Mangrum (University of Iowa).

Jasmine shared her personal perspective, as a Black American growing up in Iowa, on the Civil Rights Movement, both as a well-defined moment in U.S. history, as well as in terms of its relevance to contemporary U.S. society.

Participants in the event, mainly Romanian undergrads and graduate students, eagerly joined in the discussion, asking questions on topics ranging from more effective ways of confronting and integrating traumatic moments in history to versions and subsets of Black American identity, as well as shifts in the representation of Black Americans in popular culture and the “Black Panther” phenomenon.

Many thanks to Jasmine Mangrum for agreeing to join us for this event!