About This Event
Justified Anger: Courses is excited to announce that this year's Black Film Festival has now partnered with Madison Public Libraries. Film viewings and discussions will be hosted in various Madison libraries across the city.
We will be announcing the film lineup and schedule soon, but please add the fest to your calendar now so that you won't miss anything. The festival is free and open to everyone so get ready to experience joy, art, education, and culture together as a community.
New Date Added
Wednesday, Nov. 12 - Fountain of Life Covenant Church
Decade of Discontent (2013) - 5:30pm
A Panel Discussion with Attorney Tom Jacobson (Civil Rights Lawyer), Prof. Alexander Shashko (UW Madison Lecturer of African American Studies) & Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara (UW-Madison Department Chair if African American Studies) - 6:45pm
Thursday, Nov. 13 - Pinney Library
Fresh Dressed (2015) - 4:30pm
American Rapstar (2020) - 6:30pm
Friday, Nov. 14 - Seqouya Library
Miss Juneteenth (2020) - 1:00pm
Death to Black Love... (A Video Essay by F.D. Signifier) - 3:00pm
Mufasa (2025) - 5:00pm
Saturday, Nov. 15 - Central Library
The Comforter (A film by Rafael Ragland) - 11:30am
Echoes Of Freedom (A film by Rafael Ragland) - 2:00pm
The Great American Game (A Documentary by DonnellWrites) - 4:30pm
New Gen Collective Music Performance - 7:00pm
*Click "Get Tickets" on registration page to see registration for individual screenings and film info.
Panelist Spotlight
Attorney Thomas Jacobson
Thomas Jacobson was born on May 8, 1938, in Bamberg, Germany, a town of about 60,000, located in South-Central Germany, about 35 miles from Nuremberg and 150 miles north of Munich. The Nazi policy at the time was forced Jewish emigration versus deportation and outright murder. While his father was interned in Dachau, his mother contacted a cousin in Milwaukee, asking for sponsorship to enable their family to live in the U.S.
The family set sail on the St. Louis on May 3, 1939, and landed in Antwerp Holland in June, after being denied entry by Cuba, the US and Canada. They were then transferred to Rotterdam where they were placed in an internment camp until they sailed to Hoboken New Jersey in January,1940.
In February 1940, they arrived in Hoboken, and their sponsors took them to their new home in Milwaukee. Thomas never saw his grandparents again, as they and other relatives perished in the Holocaust.
Surviving the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust and the saga of the St. Louis, Thomas Jacobson set course for a lifelong journey of standing up to bullies and hate, and becoming a civil rights lawyer, advocating for the underdog.
After graduating from UW Law School in Madison in May of 1962, Atty Jacobson accepted the invitation of Lloyd Barbee, almost thirteen years his senior, to return to Milwaukee and join him in partnership in Milwaukee’s first integrated law firm. Barbee was Chair of the Wisconsin State Conference of NAACP branches, and was widely regarded as the leading civil rights figure and human rights advocate of the 60’s in Wisconsin.
Barbee stressed taking the civil rights struggles to local communities (in our case Milwaukee), not Alabama or Mississippi. He and Jacobson agreed that integration afforded Blacks the most meaningful opportunity for societal advancement. Milwaukee in the sixties was an extremely segregated city with high racial tensions. Many policies proposed and adopted by governmental officials were harmful to people living in poverty, and few did anything meaningful to help those most in need. A prime example was the decision to build two expressways which brought suburbanites faster access to downtown businesses, culture, restaurants and entertainment, one going north-south and the other east-west. These expressways ripped apart the central city where most Blacks and other poor people lived, and allowed the white communities traveling on high-speed expressways to avoid seeing the Black human destruction left behind as a result of eminent domain.
Atty Jacobson was very fortunate during his career to have represented all of the leading civil rights figures in Milwaukee, most notably Father James Groppi. He also served as lead counsel in an extremely high profile civil rights case involving Daniel Bell, a man framed by the Milwaukee police. In the first eight years of his practice, he argued and won two cases in the United States Supreme Court improving the lives of people in poverty.
From Atty Jacboson: "Over the years I have learned that freedom isn’t just a day on a calendar. It is a precious possession that requires vigilance and personal commitment. The daily attacks eroding democracy at the hands of extremists must be met with continuing resistance. From the darkness of the Holocaust to the courage illuminated by the light of the civil rights movement, the struggle to achieve a more just and perfect union is long and hard, but it is not lost. Democracy: Let us be its keeper, let us be its hope, let us be its salvation, let us be its voice. RESIST, RESIST, RESIST!"
Dr. Christy Clark Pujara
Christy Clark-Pujara, UW-Madison Department Chair of African American Studies, is a historian of colonial North America and the early American Republic. Her research focuses on the experiences of Black people in French and British North America in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in retrieving the hidden and unexplored histories of African Americans in areas that historians have not sufficiently examined—small towns and cities in the North and Midwest. Clark-Pujara contends that the full dimensions of the African American and the American experience cannot be appreciated without reference to how Black people managed their lives in places where they were few. Her first book Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (NYU Press, 2016), examines how the business of slavery—economic activity that was directly related to the maintenance of slaveholding in the Americas, specifically the buying and selling of people, food, and goods—shaped the experience of slavery, the process of emancipation, and the realities of black freedom in Rhode Island from the colonial period through the American Civil War. Her current book project, Black on the Midwestern Frontier: From Slavery to Suffrage in the Wisconsin Territory, 1725—1868, examines how the practice of race-based slavery, black settlement, and debates over abolition and black rights shaped white-Black race relations in the Midwest.
Clark-Pujara is committed to both academic scholarship and public history. She works closely with the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, where she teaches community history courses. Her public history work also includes writing blogs and op-eds like, “Many Tulsa Massacres: How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White Violence,” for the Smithsonian American History Magazine and “The 1539 Project: Why Black Midwest and Iowa History Matters“. Des Moines Register. Clark-Pujara is also a Segment Producer, for an in-progress documentary “African American Midwest” (Kartemquin Films and Democracy Films Co-Production distributed by PBS).
Professor Alexander Shashko
Alexander Shashko joined the Department of African American Studies in 2005; he holds an MFA in Post-1865 American History from The University of Michigan and a Bachelors of Arts in History and Political Science from The University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Shashko currently gives two to three lectures each semester for the department; Hip-Hop and Contemporary American Society (AfroAmer154) tells the story of hip-hop’s origins in Jamaica and the Bronx, its evolution across North America, and its emergence as a global phenomenon. Shashko’s Black Music and American Cultural History (AfroAmer156) explores how Black music shaped the social, musical, and political landscape of the United States from the end of World War II to the present. Both courses are offered in the fall, spring, and summer semesters. He has been selected for the UW-Madison Housing Instructor Award ten times, most recently in 2024. Since 2015, Shashko has been a Voting Member for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Local Artist Collective Spotlight
New Gen Collective
- Led by Jexizis
Closing this year's Black Film Fest will be a performance by the young artists of the New Gen Collevtive! @ 7pm - Central Library
Justin Festge Russell aka @Jexizis has a message for Madison music lovers: it is time to bring hip hop back.
@Jexizis, who was Madison’s 2024-2025 youth poet laureate and is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described the [New Gen] Collectives’ long-term goal to create infrastructure that supports creative careers. “What we’re working toward is to build this into a small local label,” he said. “We want to use the collective to branch off and get to a place where we want to be with art. That looks like just having a fan base, really, and being able to monetize this lifestyle.” The vision includes mentorship, cross-disciplinary work and collaborations across neighborhoods.
Madison Filmmaker Spotlight:
Rafael Ragland
Rafael Ragland, a native of Chicago, born to Walter Williams and Risa Ragland. He attended Bogan HS before moving to Madison, Wisconsin in 1991. He graduated from high school in 1993. In 2008 he earned an associate degree in films at Madison Media Institute, where he learned screenwriting, directing, editing, producing, filming, and scoring movies. He started writing and directing on numerous movie sets in 2010 travelling and working with different professionals.
Rafael has written and directed over 20 movies, five web series, and three stage plays. Rafael has also worked with individuals such as Tyler Perry, Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Ice Cube, and Cynda Williams, just to name a few. Rafael does it all, including acting, casting, editing, wardrobe, and makeup, as well as scoring and perfecting actors. He is known to be very skillful in this industry. Several of his movies have been shown in mainstream theaters, film festivals, and on streaming networks. He is so creative at story telling that some of his movies have been bought by well-known celebrities. Rafael has recently teamed up with a group of individuals who make up the SoGrateful Film family. They also have their own streaming network, Virtual Vision, virtualvision.site, where you can see some of Rafaels work.
Come see Rafeal's films:
The Comforter - Saturday @ 11:30am (Central Library)
Echoes Of Feedom - Saturday @ 2pm (Central Library)
About This Event
Justified Anger: Courses is excited to announce that this year's Black Film Festival has now partnered with Madison Public Libraries. Film viewings and discussions will be hosted in various Madison libraries across the city.
We will be announcing the film lineup and schedule soon, but please add the fest to your calendar now so that you won't miss anything. The festival is free and open to everyone so get ready to experience joy, art, education, and culture together as a community.
New Date Added
Wednesday, Nov. 12 - Fountain of Life Covenant Church
Decade of Discontent (2013) - 5:30pm
A Panel Discussion with Attorney Tom Jacobson (Civil Rights Lawyer), Prof. Alexander Shashko (UW Madison Lecturer of African American Studies) & Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara (UW-Madison Department Chair if African American Studies) - 6:45pm
Thursday, Nov. 13 - Pinney Library
Fresh Dressed (2015) - 4:30pm
American Rapstar (2020) - 6:30pm
Friday, Nov. 14 - Seqouya Library
Miss Juneteenth (2020) - 1:00pm
Death to Black Love... (A Video Essay by F.D. Signifier) - 3:00pm
Mufasa (2025) - 5:00pm
Saturday, Nov. 15 - Central Library
The Comforter (A film by Rafael Ragland) - 11:30am
Echoes Of Freedom (A film by Rafael Ragland) - 2:00pm
The Great American Game (A Documentary by DonnellWrites) - 4:30pm
New Gen Collective Music Performance - 7:00pm
*Click "Get Tickets" on registration page to see registration for individual screenings and film info.
Panelist Spotlight
Attorney Thomas Jacobson
Thomas Jacobson was born on May 8, 1938, in Bamberg, Germany, a town of about 60,000, located in South-Central Germany, about 35 miles from Nuremberg and 150 miles north of Munich. The Nazi policy at the time was forced Jewish emigration versus deportation and outright murder. While his father was interned in Dachau, his mother contacted a cousin in Milwaukee, asking for sponsorship to enable their family to live in the U.S.
The family set sail on the St. Louis on May 3, 1939, and landed in Antwerp Holland in June, after being denied entry by Cuba, the US and Canada. They were then transferred to Rotterdam where they were placed in an internment camp until they sailed to Hoboken New Jersey in January,1940.
In February 1940, they arrived in Hoboken, and their sponsors took them to their new home in Milwaukee. Thomas never saw his grandparents again, as they and other relatives perished in the Holocaust.
Surviving the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust and the saga of the St. Louis, Thomas Jacobson set course for a lifelong journey of standing up to bullies and hate, and becoming a civil rights lawyer, advocating for the underdog.
After graduating from UW Law School in Madison in May of 1962, Atty Jacobson accepted the invitation of Lloyd Barbee, almost thirteen years his senior, to return to Milwaukee and join him in partnership in Milwaukee’s first integrated law firm. Barbee was Chair of the Wisconsin State Conference of NAACP branches, and was widely regarded as the leading civil rights figure and human rights advocate of the 60’s in Wisconsin.
Barbee stressed taking the civil rights struggles to local communities (in our case Milwaukee), not Alabama or Mississippi. He and Jacobson agreed that integration afforded Blacks the most meaningful opportunity for societal advancement. Milwaukee in the sixties was an extremely segregated city with high racial tensions. Many policies proposed and adopted by governmental officials were harmful to people living in poverty, and few did anything meaningful to help those most in need. A prime example was the decision to build two expressways which brought suburbanites faster access to downtown businesses, culture, restaurants and entertainment, one going north-south and the other east-west. These expressways ripped apart the central city where most Blacks and other poor people lived, and allowed the white communities traveling on high-speed expressways to avoid seeing the Black human destruction left behind as a result of eminent domain.
Atty Jacobson was very fortunate during his career to have represented all of the leading civil rights figures in Milwaukee, most notably Father James Groppi. He also served as lead counsel in an extremely high profile civil rights case involving Daniel Bell, a man framed by the Milwaukee police. In the first eight years of his practice, he argued and won two cases in the United States Supreme Court improving the lives of people in poverty.
From Atty Jacboson: "Over the years I have learned that freedom isn’t just a day on a calendar. It is a precious possession that requires vigilance and personal commitment. The daily attacks eroding democracy at the hands of extremists must be met with continuing resistance. From the darkness of the Holocaust to the courage illuminated by the light of the civil rights movement, the struggle to achieve a more just and perfect union is long and hard, but it is not lost. Democracy: Let us be its keeper, let us be its hope, let us be its salvation, let us be its voice. RESIST, RESIST, RESIST!"
Dr. Christy Clark Pujara
Christy Clark-Pujara, UW-Madison Department Chair of African American Studies, is a historian of colonial North America and the early American Republic. Her research focuses on the experiences of Black people in French and British North America in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in retrieving the hidden and unexplored histories of African Americans in areas that historians have not sufficiently examined—small towns and cities in the North and Midwest. Clark-Pujara contends that the full dimensions of the African American and the American experience cannot be appreciated without reference to how Black people managed their lives in places where they were few. Her first book Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (NYU Press, 2016), examines how the business of slavery—economic activity that was directly related to the maintenance of slaveholding in the Americas, specifically the buying and selling of people, food, and goods—shaped the experience of slavery, the process of emancipation, and the realities of black freedom in Rhode Island from the colonial period through the American Civil War. Her current book project, Black on the Midwestern Frontier: From Slavery to Suffrage in the Wisconsin Territory, 1725—1868, examines how the practice of race-based slavery, black settlement, and debates over abolition and black rights shaped white-Black race relations in the Midwest.
Clark-Pujara is committed to both academic scholarship and public history. She works closely with the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, where she teaches community history courses. Her public history work also includes writing blogs and op-eds like, “Many Tulsa Massacres: How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White Violence,” for the Smithsonian American History Magazine and “The 1539 Project: Why Black Midwest and Iowa History Matters“. Des Moines Register. Clark-Pujara is also a Segment Producer, for an in-progress documentary “African American Midwest” (Kartemquin Films and Democracy Films Co-Production distributed by PBS).
Professor Alexander Shashko
Alexander Shashko joined the Department of African American Studies in 2005; he holds an MFA in Post-1865 American History from The University of Michigan and a Bachelors of Arts in History and Political Science from The University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Shashko currently gives two to three lectures each semester for the department; Hip-Hop and Contemporary American Society (AfroAmer154) tells the story of hip-hop’s origins in Jamaica and the Bronx, its evolution across North America, and its emergence as a global phenomenon. Shashko’s Black Music and American Cultural History (AfroAmer156) explores how Black music shaped the social, musical, and political landscape of the United States from the end of World War II to the present. Both courses are offered in the fall, spring, and summer semesters. He has been selected for the UW-Madison Housing Instructor Award ten times, most recently in 2024. Since 2015, Shashko has been a Voting Member for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Local Artist Collective Spotlight
New Gen Collective
- Led by Jexizis
Closing this year's Black Film Fest will be a performance by the young artists of the New Gen Collevtive! @ 7pm - Central Library
Justin Festge Russell aka @Jexizis has a message for Madison music lovers: it is time to bring hip hop back.
@Jexizis, who was Madison’s 2024-2025 youth poet laureate and is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described the [New Gen] Collectives’ long-term goal to create infrastructure that supports creative careers. “What we’re working toward is to build this into a small local label,” he said. “We want to use the collective to branch off and get to a place where we want to be with art. That looks like just having a fan base, really, and being able to monetize this lifestyle.” The vision includes mentorship, cross-disciplinary work and collaborations across neighborhoods.
Madison Filmmaker Spotlight:
Rafael Ragland
Rafael Ragland, a native of Chicago, born to Walter Williams and Risa Ragland. He attended Bogan HS before moving to Madison, Wisconsin in 1991. He graduated from high school in 1993. In 2008 he earned an associate degree in films at Madison Media Institute, where he learned screenwriting, directing, editing, producing, filming, and scoring movies. He started writing and directing on numerous movie sets in 2010 travelling and working with different professionals.
Rafael has written and directed over 20 movies, five web series, and three stage plays. Rafael has also worked with individuals such as Tyler Perry, Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Ice Cube, and Cynda Williams, just to name a few. Rafael does it all, including acting, casting, editing, wardrobe, and makeup, as well as scoring and perfecting actors. He is known to be very skillful in this industry. Several of his movies have been shown in mainstream theaters, film festivals, and on streaming networks. He is so creative at story telling that some of his movies have been bought by well-known celebrities. Rafael has recently teamed up with a group of individuals who make up the SoGrateful Film family. They also have their own streaming network, Virtual Vision, virtualvision.site, where you can see some of Rafaels work.
Come see Rafeal's films:
The Comforter - Saturday @ 11:30am (Central Library)
Echoes Of Feedom - Saturday @ 2pm (Central Library)