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African Americans Social life and customs American literature History 20th century American literature History 21st century 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 Politics and government 1901-1953Filter By Subjects
African Americans Social life and customs American literature History 20th century American literature History 21st century 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 Politics and government 1901-1953Summary: I have the strength to walk my own path, no matter how hard, in my search for reality, and not cling to the splendid wagon of desperate illusions. A writer of novels, short stories, folktales, plays, and essays, Zora Neale Hurston combined a hunger for research and a desire to penetrate the deepest of popular beliefs with a truly exquisite narrative talent. This illuminating biography of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Hosted by Eli Wallach, this program dissects Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun through the sharp insights of Joe Morton (Walter Lee Younger); Kim Yancey (Beneatha Younger); Phylicia Rashad (Lena Younger); Ruby Dee, Audra McDonald, Starletta DuPois, and Ernestine Jackson (Ruth Younger); Ralph Carter (Travis Younger); John Fiedler (Carl Lindner); directors Lloyd Richards and Jack Hofsiss;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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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: 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: In the early 20th century, community centers called settlement houses were established across America. This documentary relates the history of one such facility-the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House, known in its time as "the greatest settlement house in the U.S. for Negroes." The program profiles its first director, W. Gertrude Brown, who touched the lives of generations of African-Americans,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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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: 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: 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: 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: This program traces the path of African-American literature from the shores of the U.S. to the Left Bank of Paris at the end of World War II through the late 1960s. The program provides context by first exploring the New Orleans salon poetry of Desdunes and discussing the historic suppression of black activists in the U.S. After the Harlem Renaissance, an increasingly hostile climate drove...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program uses in-depth interviews with two generations of five African families now living in the Denver area to explore the dynamic process that is ethnic identity. Having emigrated from Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, the families bring unique traditions to a shared experience: life in America. The interviews reveal the hopes of the first generation for the second, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In this program, Dennis Wholey has a conversation about the African Methodist Episcopal Church with the Reverend Daryl B. Ingram of the Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Topics of discussion include the birth and growth of the A.M.E. denomination, the meaning of "African Methodist Episcopal" in the context of the Church's name, and the Church's core beliefs as articulated in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Once reserved for African royalty, kente cloth has become a familiar pattern in American culture. Narrated by Tony Award-winning actress Ann Duquesnay, this program traces how kente cloth crossed the Atlantic from the West African Republic of Ghana at the beginning of the civil rights movement to literally become part of the fabric of American life. Film footage shows Ashanti and Ewe weavers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006