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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: During this episode of New York: A Documentary Film, filmmaker Ric Burns explores how the post-World War I economic boom, the rise of consumer culture, and the birth of new mass media industries fueled the convergence of an incredible array of human and cultural energies, ending with the stock market crash of 1929 and the construction of the Empire State Building. In just over a decade, New...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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Summary: During this episode of New York: A Documentary Film, filmmaker Ric Burns documents how the dramatic events that followed the Crash of ’29 fueled the greatest financial depression in American history and plunged the city and the nation into economic gloom. In little more than ten years, immense new forces were unleashed in New York, from the Depression itself to the New Deal, which permanently...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: 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 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...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In the years preceding 1929, the stock market rose, seemingly without limits, to usher a “New Era” of prosperity—one where it was widely believed that in America, everyone could become rich. Yet in reality, only the rich were becoming richer. As told by the descendants of the financial “folk heroes” of the economic boom of early 1920s, The Crash of 1929, from the PBS American Experience...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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: In March of 1931, two white women stepped off a train in Paint Rock, Alabama, and accused nine black teenage passengers of gang rape. So began the Scottsboro case, one of the 20th century's most fiery legal battles. This episode of American Experience chronicles the case, which generated what many view as the most divisive regional conflict since the Civil War, led to momentous Supreme Court...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
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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: This program illustrates the events of World War I as it was waged in the conflict's primary theater of operations, Europe. Topics include the root causes of the war and the military alliances that ignited it; the introduction of modern weaponry such as machine guns, poison gas, fighter planes, and U-boats; America's decisive involvement, including the participation of women and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Examines a major 1931 earthquake in Nicaragua.
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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.
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Listening to our Past is a piecing together of the family histories of four of the series participants. The episode explores the post-World War I “Great Migration” of African-Americans from the South to northern cities like Detroit and Chicago, as well as those who stayed in the South during the period of Jim Crow segregation. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. also begins an intriguing examination of his...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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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: From the collapse of the stock market on October 29, 1929-Black Tuesday-to the many federal initiatives designed to revive the faltering U.S. economy, this program offers an insightful overview of life during the Great Depression. The presidential administrations of Herbert Hoover and FDR; the New Deals and their effects on labor, conservation, and cultural life; the Dust Bowl; and the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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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,...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The engineering problems were stupendous; the solutions ingenious. And as stated by President Herbert Hoover himself, it was “the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted by the hand of man.” For two years, five thousand workers settled in the Nevada dessert to pour concrete day and night until the Hoover Dam was complete - remarkably under budget and ahead of schedule. As...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The populist governor of Louisiana and United States senator, Huey Long captured the American imagination with his dramatic speeches and promise of “Every man a king.” “The Kingfish” governed during the Great Depression, advocating public works and spending money on state highways, hospitals, schools, and old age pensions. Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns examines Long’s extraordinary career from...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1985
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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