Summary: In a searing parody of American television and racial attitudes a young African American network executive, under pressure from his white boss, creates a minstrel show, hoping that it will fail and that he will be released from his network contract -- but the TV show becomes both a hit and the subject of much controversy.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: New Line Home Entertainment 2001

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Comedy DVDs, Call number: DVD COMEDY BAM

Summary: Filmmaker Byron Hurt looks at the past and future of soul food, covering its roots in Western Africa, its incarnation in the American South, and the role it plays in the health crisis in the African American community. Examines the socioeconomics of the modern American diet, and how the food industry profits from producing cheap calories while healthy options remain expensive and hard to find.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS 2013

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV SOU

Summary: Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences, at once liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming, of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond, it explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV DRI

Summary: In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary, part music film, part historical record, created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

3 available in Music DVDs, Call number: DVD MUSIC SUM

Summary: Genealogical investigations and DNA analysis help participants discover where they come from and who they are.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS Home Video 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV AFR

Summary: Two down-and-out Americans in Mexico meet a grizzled old prospector who piques their interest with stories of his gold-hunting experiences. The Americans gather a stake and set off with the old prospector in search of fortune.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Turner Entertainment Co. 2003

Copies Available at Woodmere

3 available in Action / Adventure DVDs, Call number: DVD ACTION/ADVENTURE TRE

Summary: This story begins on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism. It comes to a bloody end almost five years later on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. In the years since those events unfolded, the man at the center, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has become a mythic figure, a minister whose...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS Home Video 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV CIT

Summary: The story of the 'Fighting 99th' - the first squadron of black American pilots to be allowed to fight for their country. It is 1943 and the U.S. is suffering huge losses on the ground and in the air. Four newly recruited pilots are united by a desire to serve their country, at a time when black flyers were not welcomed in the Air Force. Now, the "Tuskegee Airmen" must undertake the riskiest...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2010

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD DRAMA TUS

Copies Available at Interlochen

1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD Movie Tuskegee

Summary: Take an unprecedented look at the intersection of African American women artists, politics and entertainment and hear the story of how six trailblazing performers--Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, Nina Simone, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier--changed American culture through their films, fashion, music, and politics.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV HOW

Summary: Challenges one of America's most cherished assumptions, the belief that slavery in the U.S. ended with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, by telling the harrowing story of how, in the South, a new system of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS Distribution 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV SLA

Summary: Best friends and criminals Durell Washington and LeeJohn are two thieves who haven't got a prayer. Sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service, Durell's life quickly goes from bad to worse. Realizing that the Lord helps those who help themselves, he eventually decides to help himself to the neighborhood church's building fund. Accompanied by LeeJohn, the two down-on-their-luck men are...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2008

Copies Available at Fife Lake

1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD FIR

Summary: "In 2011, construction workers were shocked to uncover the remains of a woman in an abandoned lot in Queens, New York. Follow forensic archaeologist Scott Warnasch and a team of historians and scientists as they investigate this woman' story, revealing a vivid picture of what life was like for free African American people in the North."--

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV WOM

Summary: "In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation could not turn away from Mississippi. Over 10 memorable weeks known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers joined with organizers and local African Americans in a historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in one of the nation's most segregated states ... even in the face of intimidation, physical violence, and...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV FRE

Summary: Step up to the bar at Paddy's Pub and get into the crazy world of Dee, Charlie, Frank and Mac as they pursue even more outrageous subjects like cannibalism, glory-hole fixations, or Dennis's over-the-top sexual memoirs.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 2009

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Television Series DVDs, Call number: DVD TV IT'S

Summary: Looks at the legacy of the case of Vincent Chin, a young Chinese American man who was attacked and killed at his bachelor's party at a suburban Detroit bar by current and former autoworkers who were unhappy with competition from Japanese auto manufacturers. The case attracted wide attention after Chin's attackers struck a plea bargain and were sentenced to three thousand dollars in fines and...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Asian Pacific Americans for Progress 2013

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC VIN

Summary: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. embarks on a deeply personal journey through the last fifty years of African American history. Joined by leading scholars, celebrities, and a dynamic cast of people who shaped these years, Gates travels from the victories of the civil rights movement up to today, asking profound questions about the state of black America, and our nation as a whole.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2013

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV BLA

Summary: Among the most fascinating chapters of film history is that of the so-called "race films" that flourished in the 1920s -'40s. Unlike the "black cast" films produced within the Hollywood studio system, these films not only starred African Americans but were funded, written, produced, edited, distributed, and often exhibited by people of color. Entrepreneurial filmmakers built an industry apart...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC PIO
1 available in Sight & Sound Print Material, Call number: SSC DVD DOC PIO

Summary: An adaptation of Alex Haley's "Roots", in which Haley traces his African American family's history from the mid-18th century to the Reconstruction era.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Warner Home Video 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Television Series DVDs, Call number: DVD TV ROO

Summary: Tells the story of the struggle for freedom by thousands of African-American ex-slaves who fled Southern plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence. Follows their dream of a journey to freedom in bone-chilling Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone. Features the stories of Englishman John Clarkson, a passionate advocate of the abolition of slavery, and two African men,...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: BBC Video 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV ROU

Summary: Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Crime / Mystery DVDs, Call number: DVD + BLU-RAY TIL

Summary: Explore with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the evolution of the African-American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives they developed-forging their own history, culture and society against unimaginable odds.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV AFR

Summary: In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV BLI