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African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Sports United States Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 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 Sports United States Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 United States History Study and teaching United States Politics and government 1901-1953Summary: 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Summary: Examines a major 1931 earthquake in Nicaragua.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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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
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Summary: During the 1920s, Babe Ruth's phenomenal performance at the plate made him the savior of baseball, rescuing the game from the Black Sox scandal of the previous decade. This program focuses on that miraculous period, in which power hitting became the centerpiece of baseball's allure and the monikers "Bambino" and "Sultan of Swat" conjured a magic understood by an entire nation. Viewers learn...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Henry Ford's Model T and assembly line, together with the discovery of abundant oil reserves, opened up a new way of life for Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century. This episode looks at those developments and traces the significance of World War I, prohibition, African-American migration from the South to northern cities, and the origin and growth of the Hollywood film industry.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Summary: Although previous episodes of Ken Burns' Baseball series also deal with African-American contributions to the game, much of this program is devoted to the Negro Leagues and the vast number of talented black players barred from competing in the Majors. The film's title refers to a common pre-game feature in which players staged a mock game with an imaginary ball-an unintended yet apt metaphor...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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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
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Summary: As the nation mobilized for war in the spring of 1918, an ailing Private Albert Gitchell reported to the army hospital in Fort Riley, Kansas. His complaint was of fever, sore throat, and headache. He was diagnosed with the flu, a disease about which doctors knew little. Within days, 522 men at the camp had reported sick. Shortly thereafter, the Spanish Flu would reach the civilian population,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1998
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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
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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
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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
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Summary: Looks at FDR's famed 'Nothing to Fear' speech and the 1933 repeal of Prohibition.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: 1939 brought momentous events that changed the course of history. Year by Year looks at the beginnings of World War II and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pledge of neutrality.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Comparing sports with religion only goes so far, but in early-20th-century America, the reverence accorded baseball and its players resembled the trust and respect a priest might elicit from his parishioners. This program examines the life of the game between 1910 and 1920-the decade in which a godlike figure named Babe Ruth first appeared and the Black Sox scandal threatened, in the words of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011