Filter By Subjects
African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 United States History 1961-1969 United States History Study and teaching United States Politics and government 1901-1953Filter By Subjects
African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 United States History 1961-1969 United States History Study and teaching United States Politics and government 1901-1953Summary: Compiled by author, teacher, and curriculum advisor Ben Walsh, this program features 11 extracts on the Cuban missile crisis from various film archive sources. Clip selections and Walsh's commentary are organized around the following three topics: the build-up to the crisis, the actions and decisions of President John F. Kennedy in confronting the threat, and the outcome of the conflict in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The flowering of the Jazz Age is a tale of two great cities, Chicago and New York, and two extraordinary artists whose achievements spanned nearly three-quarters of a century. Louis Armstrong was a fatherless waif who grew up on the rough streets of New Orleans, developing his extraordinary gifts before moving to Chicago, where his transcendent sound inspired a new generation of musicians. Duke...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
View online at AVOD
Summary: The story of jazz begins in New Orleans, 19th-century America's most cosmopolitan city. Here, in the 1890s, African-American artists created a new music out of ragtime syncopations, Caribbean rhythms, marching band instrumentation, and the soulful feeling of the blues. This program introduces the pioneers of this revolutionary art form: half-mad cornet player Buddy Bolden, pianist Jelly Roll...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
View online at AVOD
Summary: When America entered World War II, jazz became part of the arsenal, with bandleaders like Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw taking their swing to troops overseas. For many black Americans, however, that sound had a hollow ring. Segregated at home and in uniform, they found themselves fighting for liberties their own country denied them-as when authorities padlocked the integrated Savoy Ballroom....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the Depression dragged on, jazz came as close as it ever would to being America's popular music. Now it was often called swing, and, as this program illustrates, it became the defining music of a generation. Suddenly, jazz bandleaders were the new matinee idols, with Benny Goodman hailed as the "King of Swing," while teenagers jitterbugged just as hard to the music of his rivals: Tommy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: The stock market surged through the 1920s and jazz was everywhere in America. Now, for the first time, soloists and singers took center stage, transforming the music with distinctive voices and unique stories. This program introduces Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues, whose songs eased the pain of life for millions of black Americans; Bix Beiderbecke, the first great white jazz star, inspired...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: The social tensions underlying America's postwar prosperity were reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop-and in the troubled life of Charlie Parker. Nicknamed "Bird," Parker demonstrated ideas and techniques as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong's had been a quarter-century before. But Parker wasn't the only bebop innovator. Dizzy Gillespie...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Dixieland, swing, bebop, modal, free, avant-garde, these were some of the terms critics used during the 1960s to categorize the diverse manifestations of jazz music. As for the artists themselves, many were desperate for work and headed for Europe, including bebop saxophone master Dexter Gordon. At home, jazz sought relevance. During the Civil Rights struggle it became a voice of protest, while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: With farms and factories falling victim to the Great Depression, jazz was one of the few American industries poised for explosive growth. This program explores the art form during the first half of the decade, a period in which New York City usurped Chicago as America's jazz capital, Louis Armstrong revolutionized Broadway song craft, and Chick Webb forged his big-band sound at the Savoy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Amid the rise of suburbia, television, rock 'n' roll, and the baby boom generation, jazz lost a beloved and burned-out star: Billie Holiday. But the music still had its two guiding lights. In 1956, the first year Elvis topped the charts, Duke Ellington recaptured the nation's ear with a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. The next year, Louis Armstrong made headlines when he condemned...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the 1930s drew to a close, swing-mania was still going strong, but some fans were saying success had made the music too predictable. Their ears were tuned to a new sound, suffused with the blues-the Kansas City sound of Count Basie's band, which ignited new musical adventures. By 1938, Basie and his men were helping Benny Goodman bring jazz to Carnegie Hall. Soon Basie's lead saxophonist,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: America continues to make tremendous strides through the prosperity of the 1980s, 1990s, and into the new millennium. The nation's mettle is severely tested by the tragedy of September 11, 2001, but the people of the United States rally together. New York City comes to stand as a symbol of American diversity.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
View online at AVOD
Summary: The 1960s bring new progress in the quest for freedom, but this is also an explosive decade that threatens to tear apart the fabric of society. President Kennedy is assassinated, and Lyndon B. Johnson pursues the war in Vietnam. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated, leaving behind an impressive and growing legacy of non-violent civil rights resistance.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Cold War turns hot in Viet Nam... a burglary at the Watergate Hotel becomes a national crisis... a space shuttle ascent erupts in tragedy... these are a few of the momentous events examined in this program. The 9/11 attacks and the election of President Barack Obama are discussed, along with the technological forces that drove America toward the 21st century: television, the credit card,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Throughout the 1930s and 40s, John L. Lewis was the most powerful figure in the U.S. labor movement. This episode of A&E Classroom examines the president of the United Mine Workers of America, an independent and strong-willed leader who secured rights and benefits for the miners. A major force behind the founding of the CIO, Lewis also played a role in Franklin D. Roosevelt's election.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Seabiscuit’s fame as a champion racehorse was unexpected yet it was timely. In the 1930s, when American’s longed to escape the grim realities of the Great Depression, Seabiscuit became the working man’s hero. Despite his boxy build, stumpy legs, scraggly tail, and ungainly gait, he was one of the most remarkable Thoroughbred racehorses in history. Seabiscuit, from the PBS American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: With Black Thursday, and the collapse of the stock market, America heads into the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt builds a New Deal, while, overseas, Adolf Hitler rises to power and invades Poland. Responding to Pearl Harbor, the worst attack in American history to that time, FDR guides the nation through World War II.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
View online at AVOD
Summary: Emerging from the First World War as a leading economic and geopolitical power, America entered a phase of unprecedented prosperity and cultural change-an era often described as the Jazz Age. In this program, teacher and historian Ben Walsh uses archival and newsreel footage to outline and comment on the period, from the Treaty of Versailles to the Wall Street crash of 1929. The video...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Examines a major 1931 earthquake in Nicaragua.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Looks at the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby son. Bruno Hauptmann was subsequently arrested and his sensational trial in 1935 captivated the nation.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: With help from the Wright brothers' introduction of the airplane, the country begins to soar. Woodrow Wilson and America reluctantly join the fight in World War I, while on the home front, women at last get the right to vote. The twenties roar with new levels of personal freedom.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2002
View online at AVOD
Summary: Orson Welles' radio broadcast of War of the Worlds panicked Americans across the country. In the U.K., Neville Chamberlain delivered his famous speech, Peace in Our Times.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Explores the events and trends of 1930, including the Great Depression and Mt. Rushmore. Charles Lindbergh and wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh's record-setting, coast-to-coast flight is also covered.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Observes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reassuring fireside chats and the death of gangster John Dillinger.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011