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While only making up 3% of all universities in our country, [Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)] graduate nearly 20% of all African American students earning a bachelor’s degree…80% of all black federal judges started at an HBCU, 75% of Black officers in the Armed Forces, Black PhDs and Black doctors; 70% of Black dentists; 50% of Black teachers, engineers and lawyers come from HBCUs. 40% of Black members of Congress, 25% of Black graduates in the STEM field and 100% of Black and Female Vice-Presidents come from HBCUs.
Put simple, you make our country better.
— US Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and the individuals educated within them have made innumerable contributions to American society, yet much of this history continues to be untold. One way to document the rich history and impact of these institutions is to develop a digital archive that preserves and shines a light on the unique stories of activism, leadership, and community building that have positively shaped the United States and the larger world. What stories of transformative faculty/staff/administrators, influential alumni, unique band/athletic programming or other cultural experiences help us better understand the contributions of HBCUs? Films and filmmaking are underutilized tools in documenting HBCU histories, yet when engaged, they give filmmakers the opportunity to pursue novel storytelling techniques with sound, music and visual art integration.
The HBCU Film Festival is a short film festival providing the opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to exhibit their emerging work on the history and ongoing contributions of HBCUs. Any student or team of two students is eligible to submit a film. Films that have previously screened in other festivals are eligible for submission. Filmmakers should comply with all copyrights (i.e. soundtracks, actor releases) required for their films before submitting them.
The Spring 2025 Film Festival will include film screenings and panel discussions.
Marla Frederick, Film Festival Founder
Marla Frederick is a leading ethnographer and scholar focused on the African American religious experience. She became the eighteenth Dean of Harvard Divinity School on January 1, 2024.
Frederick employs an interdisciplinary approach to examining the ways religion, race, and politics impact our everyday lives. Her influential scholarship is principally focused on the study of religion and media, religion and social activism in the U.S. South, and the sustainability of Black institutions in a “post-racial” world.
From 2019 to 2023, Frederick served as the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. She served on the Harvard faculty from 2003 to 2019, including as an assistant professor in the Department of African and African American Studies, with a joint appointment on the Committee on the Study of Religion. In 2008, she was named the Morris Kahn Associate Professor and then as a tenured professor in 2010.
In addition to her faculty appointments at Harvard, Frederick served in a variety of leadership roles, including as interim chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, a member of the provost’s academic leadership forum, and as director of graduate studies and chair of the admissions committee for the Department of African and African American Studies.
She is the author or co-author of four books, including Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global and Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith. As general editor, she is currently curating, alongside five co-editors, an encyclopedia of the histories of historically Black colleges and universities. She also served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2021 and has been president of the Association of Black Anthropologists.
She is a graduate of Spelman College and Duke University.
Crystal R. Sanders, Film Festival Coordinator
Crystal R. Sanders is an award-winning historian of the United States in the twentieth century. Her research and teaching interests include African American History, Black Women’s History, Civil Rights History, and the History of Black Education. She received her BA (cum laude) in History and Public Policy from Duke University and a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University. Before coming to Emory, she was an Associate Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University.
Professor Sanders is the author of A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016 and A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2024. A Chance for Change won the 2017 Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association and the 2017 New Scholar’s Book Award from Division F of the American Educational Research Association. A Chance for Change was also a finalist for the 2016 Hooks National Book Award. Professor Sanders’ work can also be found in many of the leading history journals, including the Journal of Southern History, the North Carolina Historical Review, and the Journal of African American History.
Professor Sanders is the recipient of a host of fellowships and prizes. These honors include the C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association, the Huggins-Quarles Award from the Organization of American Historians, a Visiting Scholars Fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Anthony Kaye Fellowship at the National Humanities Center. In 2021, the American Historical Association awarded her its Equity Award.
Professor Sanders currently serves as the Assistant Editor of the Journal of African American History.
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