The movie, released in 2013, tells the story of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was killed by the police in 2009 in Fruitvale Station in the Bay Area in Oakland, California.

MSU Director of Community Relations Ginny Haas said it was for the timeliness of “Fruitvale Station” that it was selected to be part of this year’s One Book, One Community, hosted in conjunction with the City of East Lansing.

Coogler said the difference between the murder of Grant in 2009 is that not only did it happen in front of a train full of people, but it also was captured on those people’s cell phones. This gave other people the opportunity to see what happened, causing more outcry from people across the state and the nation.

This year’s theme goes hand in hand with the university’s year-long Project 60/50, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The program has been revisited this year to include two books, “March Book One,” a graphic novel, “The Grace of Silence,” a memoir and a movie, “Fruitvale Station.”

“It’s always good to shake up a program,” Haas said, adding that in the past, people sometimes commented that they couldn’t follow every author’s style. Having not only literature, but also a film made the program even more approachable.

“It does allow for a different kind of engagement,” she said.

Director of East Lansing Public Library Kristin Shelley said the topic was so huge and the literature were so many that the selection committee saw it as more fit to pick more than one literature and a film to represent it.

“Fruitvale Station was an easy choice because it was a more modern take,” Shelley said.

She said she has noticed there’s been a huge amount of engagement this year since the events hosted were grander than previous years.

Lauren Moreau, graduate student in the Masters of Social Work program, said the film was as shocking as it was moving.

“I definitely think it brought an awareness to people in terms of feeling like they could talk about something like that and not only just talking about it with other people, but also just sharing the emotional impact it had on them,” Moreau said.