Throughout February, IU Bloomington hosted a multitude of events to celebrate Black history, artistry and achievement. The theme for this year’s Black History Month events was “For the Love of Black Culture.”
2025 also marks 55 years since the opening of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center (NMBCC). As such, organizers wanted to curate events that utilized the Culture Center’s resources as well as highlight the Center’s common collaborators.
“The point of [the theme] was to take all the things that we know and love about the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center and fold them into ways we can show gratitude to the people, departments, and entities that ... have always supported us over the course of these years,” said Gloria Howell, Ph.D., Director of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center.
The NMBCC seeks to begin Black History Month each year with an exciting kickoff event. 
The kickoff event for this year, the “For the Love of Hip-Hop House Party,” served as a homage to “not just hip-hop as a music genre, but hip-hop as a culture,” said Howell. It was also a collaboration with the African American Arts Institute (AAAI), which was celebrating its 50th anniversary.
In another collaboration with the Lilly Library, the NMBCC hosted award-winning romance author Beverly Jenkins for a Books and Brunch event. Jenkins’ work Indigo is currently featured in a Lilly Library exhibition titled Love in the Library, where it is celebrated as a foundational work in the Black historical romance genre.
In the collaborative nature of February’s events, the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center hopes it can introduce students to the wide array of other cultural resources on campus. “We're a thread through so many different entities, whether they be academic scholars, archives, or museum type spaces,” said Howell. “All roads go through the Neal-Marshall.”
Other events included teach-ins and keynotes to educate on Black history as well as community-building events where Black students and staff were invited to share meals and conversation.
Organizers wanted February to be “a month full of joy” for all students. “[We wanted to] find ways that we can show love and gratitude and celebrate blackness and all that it represents,” said Howell.
As a member of the Black History Month Committee for the City of Bloomington, Howell wanted February to be special, but she also wants to bring February’s energy into the rest of the year. “We should be celebrating these things not just during Black History Month, not just during milestone celebrations,” she said. “We don't have to wait until February to do that and when February ends, it doesn't mean that it stops.”
Howell hopes Black History Month’s events remind Black students that “you have excellence inside you, and you can accomplish great things.”
Performers posing for a photo after the “For the Love of Black Artistry: Black Tonk” event hosted February 18.