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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program looks at how African-Americans defined their freedom after slavery. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reviews courthouse records of land acquisitions, documents from the Freedmen's Bureau and the 1870 census—the first in which African-Americans were counted as citizens, not property—to trace his subjects’ lineages through Reconstruction. A vein that continues throughout the series is Gates'...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Though Hispanic people journey to the United States from different homelands, do they all share the same heritage and concerns? This program takes a detailed look at the fastest-growing minority in the U.S. and what it means to be Latino and American. The documentary contrasts the experience of being a Latino in a flourishing ethnic neighborhood of a big city with living in a small town, where...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: As communism tightened its grip on what was once South Vietnam, a stream of refugees poured into America. This program uses poignant interviews and archival footage to reveal the fortitude of Vietnamese who faced the gravest hardships in their escape to the U.S. following the fall of Saigon. In addition, Vu-Duc Vuong, of the University of California, Berkeley, and South Vietnamese and American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this episode, when the paper trail runs out, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. visits scientists who are using DNA analysis to trace ancestral roots. With results in hand he meets with leading historians of the slave trade and discovers more fascinating details about his own ancestry. Finally, Professor Gates and a guest journey to Africa, where they visit the port from which the guest’s patrilineal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The challenge of genealogical research is even more evident as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. continues back through the Colonial period of American history in this program. The film takes us on a journey to fill in the family trees of each of the series participants, through war service records and various records of property during slavery's apogee—including inventories, sales, or gifts of slaves. In...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Recent U.S. Census figures provide dramatic testimony to the growth of the Latino population. This program looks at the "Three Houses of Latino Culture"-Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Mexican-American-and their widespread influence from entertainment to politics to economics. Key issues include how long Hispanics have been in America and how U.S. immigration laws affect their assimilation. Interviews...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In many ways, American healthcare is number one-but not in overall performance, says the WHO, which ranked the U.S. 37th. Unlike most first-world countries, America does not guarantee care for all of its citizens regardless of ability to pay. This ABC News program seeks to understand what factors contribute to top-notch healthcare as it assesses the advantages and disadvantages of the Canadian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: At St. Bernard's Hospital, in Chicago's blighted Englewood neighborhood, the ER staff refuses to back away from the challenge of serving patients with serious mental illnesses and little or no insurance-a population precariously poised to slip between the cracks of a healthcare system that is not set up to catch them. Who are the dedicated professionals stretching their limited resources to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Through candid interviews with first- and second-generation Vietnamese-Americans, this program documents the process of assimilation into American culture of refugees from the former Republic of Vietnam. Vu-Duc Vuong, of the University of California, Berkeley, as well as college students, professionals, and clergy explore what it means to be of Vietnamese descent in America today. Topics...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Today's emergency rooms are being used as a safety net for a healthcare system that leaves tens of millions of Americans uninsured-and that net is about to break. Because ERs are required to treat every patient who comes through the door, people with nowhere else to turn are joining the critical-care crowd. This ABC News program reports on America's emergency room crisis, in which many ERs,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The traditional role of wife and mother is changing rapidly to that of independent, self-sufficient working woman for many American Latina women. In this program, several prominent Latina women, including author Isabel Allende, discuss their changing role within the context of Hispanic family values, male machismo, and the traditional role of females as the center of family and community life....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Hispanics and African-Americans-from politicians to poets to everyday people-speak candidly about the tensions between their communities. In Los Angeles, Mexican-Americans resent the African-American perception of them as mostly illegal immigrants who are taking their jobs. In Miami, the division between blacks and Hispanics leaves Cubans feeling culturally isolated. In New York, Puerto Ricans...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: From news anchors to editors, from actors to filmmakers-Hispanics are making their presence known. Discrimination still exists, however. In this program, Hispanics who have made it describe how they did it, the problems they encountered along the way, and the hurdles that remain. Those interviewed include Geraldo Rivera, Academy Award-winning director Moctesuma Esparza, and Clint Eastwood...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, Geraldo Rivera and a host of Hispanic American executives discuss how they overcame racial and financial discrimination to turn their fledgling businesses into million-dollar corporations. The executives include construction mogul Linda Alvarado, owner of the Colorado Rockies baseball team; the developer of the Simpsons and Garfield cartoon programs; the owner of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The strategic key to the American Revolution, a vital transportation artery for a fledgling nation, and an enduring source of spiritual and artistic inspiration, the Hudson River is a true American icon. This Bill Moyers program focuses on the seminal role the Hudson has played in the development of America's culture, literature, art, economy, industry, and ideology. Interviews with historian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Hosted by actor Jimmy Smits, this program examines how second-generation Hispanics are adapting to American society, and how they are maintaining their Latino roots while assimilating into the American cultural mainstream. A variety of famous and everyday Hispanic Americans are interviewed, including pop film director Richard Rodriquez. Hispanics from doctors and police officers to comedians,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Anglo-Americans tend to lump Hispanics together, forgetting that the category covers a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Mexican culture is different from Puerto Rican culture, and so on. In this program, three Hispanic Americans-New York Justice Frank Torres, a Puerto Rican; Cuban-born former Miami mayor Xavier Suarez; and Mexican restaurateur Gordino Velasco-discuss what unites and divides...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Hudson River, the catalyst for the conservation movement of the 19th century and the environmental movement of the 20th, remains a focus of conflicting desires and competing demands. In this Bill Moyers program, Robert Boyle, author of The Hudson River: A Natural and Unnatural History; Hudson Riverkeeper John Cronin; folksinger Pete Seeger, founder of the Clearwater Foundation; Franny...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Education is intrinsic to success in our society. But for members of Hispanic groups, good education may be hard to come by, because of either language barriers or under-performing schools. This program, hosted by actor Edward James Olmos, examines how Hispanic American children are faring in the educational system, with an emphasis on bilingual education. Two such programs in California and in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Following World War II, the parks were overwhelmed as visitation reached 62 million people a year. This final episode describes how a billion-dollar campaign, Mission 66, was created to build facilities and infrastructure to accommodate the growing flood of visitors. Biologist Adolph Murie introduced the revolutionary notion that predatory animals deserved the same protection as other wildlife....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The new immigration laws of 1965 were a turning point for the Chinese in America and allowed a new wave of immigrants to enter the country. Chinese American life has flourished in the years since. Narrated by Bill Moyers, this program presents intimate portraits of the new Chinese Americans who face a struggle common to so many immigrants: to reconcile some losses of their old culture in order...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Born and raised in the United States, Gish Jen has become a leading literary voice of the Chinese American experience. In this program, Bill Moyers talks with the critically acclaimed writer, whose novels and short stories are known for their humorous and incisive edge.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
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