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African Americans History African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Moyers, Bill D 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 History African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Moyers, Bill D Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 United States Politics and government 1901-1953Summary: The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1911, the first newsreels flickered in America's nickelodeons. In the mid-1960s, they vanished from movie theaters as nightly television newscasts came to dominate visual journalism. In between, newsreels grew into a unique 20th-century institution that informed and entertained whole generations. In this program, Bill Moyers conducts a tour of the cultural and political landscape so...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1932, the United States had almost no provision by which the federal government could offer a helping hand to the victims of economic collapse. But with a staggering number of Americans out of work, soup kitchens and private charities were simply overwhelmed. Enter Franklin D. Roosevelt-a leader ready to act, armed with a New Deal for the country. Bill Moyers explores America's...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In this episode, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to battle unemployment in the Great Depression, created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which spawned a “golden age” for the parks through major renovation projects. In a groundbreaking study, a young NPS biologist named George Melendez Wright discovered widespread abuses of animal habitats and pushed the service to reform its wildlife policies. Congress...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Danger has always surrounded the coal miner's profession, but in the early years of the Colorado coal fields, it was almost as risky for a worker to stay above ground and face the wrath of the company as it was to toil in the tunnels below. This Bill Moyers program presents the memories of the people who worked those mines, freeing the rocks, metals, and minerals on which much of 20th-century...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Conventional wisdom enshrines the 1920s as the decade that roared-a time in which Americans kicked up their heels to the Charleston and went for one long joyride before the Wall Street crash of 1929. As this Bill Moyers program illustrates, those things did happen, but so did many others-not all of them fondly remembered. Nineteen Americans who lived through those years talk about their lives...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This Bill Moyers program features news correspondent Richard Strout, who covered Washington and the White House from 1925 to his retirement in 1984. Strout's reports, filed for the Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, are studied here not only as chronicles of American history but as milestones circumscribing our nation's capital-and its evolution from a "small town" to the nerve...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In this program, Bill Moyers returns to his hometown of Marshall, Texas-discovering, in his words, "a new town perched on the memory of one that's gone." Today it is hoped and expected that all of Marshall's citizens, regardless of racial background, share the responsibilities of living and working in a small town. But there was a time in recent history when the opposite was assumed and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The year 1954 can now be seen as a clarifying point of convergence in American history. Among other things, it was the year that brought the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw racial segregation in the schools of the United States. In this program, Bill Moyers, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee tell the story of how the New Deal, World War II, and postwar social changes set the stage for a long-awaited...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The 20th century began with enormous hopes for a future made safe and humane by technology. Although it realized some of these hopes, the century neared its end under the shadow of superweapons that still threaten the earth with annihilation. In this program, Bill Moyers traces the evolution of three instruments that enabled combatants to mass-produce death-the machine gun, the submarine, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: FDR sailing with a friend
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1930
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Summary: For African-Americans, the 20th century was fraught with contrasts. There was the glowing promise of equality in the nation's charters and there was the actual bigotry that shadowed and shrank that promise. In this program, Bill Moyers is joined by a distinguished couple who have long spoken for black aspirations-Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Together they re-create, in dramatic dialogue and often...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Theodore Roosevelt-cowboy, soldier, explorer, hunter, historian, reformer, naturalist, and last but not least, President of the United States. He led America exuberantly into the 1900s, but for all his unswerving patriotism and over-brimming confidence, his tenure as Chief Executive was as laden with complexity as the new century itself. In this program, Bill Moyers joins Roosevelt biographer...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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: 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: In 1931, the rains stopped. Soon, blinding black dirt swept across the southern plains of America. Acres of crops withered and died as over-plowing created conditions for disaster: tiny dust particles invading food, water, and the lungs of millions of animals and people alike. Less well-known than those who sought refuge in California—typified by the Joad family in John Steinbeck's “The Grapes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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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 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: 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
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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