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

Summary: Examines the life and legacy of African American poet, memoirist, and civil rights worker Maya Angelou, from her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her work with Malcolm X in Ghana to the recitation of her inaugural poem for President Bill Clinton. Includes Angelou's own words woven together with archival photographs and videos as well as interviews with Angelou's friends and family.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Peninsula

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

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

Summary: Words from a Bear gives a thorough survey of Momaday's most prolific years as a doctorate fellow at Stanford University, his achievement of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1969, and his later works that solidified his place as the founding member of the 'Native American Renaissance' in art and literature, influencing a generation of Native American artists, scholars, and political activists.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Trail of tears : Cherokee legacy: Documents the forced removal in 1838 of the Cherokee Nation from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma. Shows the suffering endured by the Cherokees as they lost their land and the difficult conditions they endured on the trail. Describes how thousands of Cherokees died during the Trail of Tears, nearly a quarter of the nation, including most of their...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Mill Creek Entertainment 2009

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: Celebrate the vibrant jazz, R&B, and soul music of African American artists who, during segregation, created the foundation of modern American music. Like many other Black Americans, they relied on Victor Hugo Green's Negro Travelers' Green Book, a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were safe and welcomed. Now explore the history of this...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Author Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological work challenges assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had been defined by the field in the 19th century.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: An unvarnished look at the unlikely author whose autobiographical fiction helped shape American ideas of the frontier and self-reliance. A Midwestern farm woman who published her first novel at age 65, Laura Ingalls Wilder transformed her frontier childhood into the best-selling Little House series.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: Edgar Allan Poe: buried alive draws on the rich palette of Poe's evocative imagery and sharply drawn plots to tell the real story of the notorious author. Featuring Tony Award-winning actor Denis O'Hare, the film explores the misrepresentations of Poe as an alcoholic madman. It reveals the way in which Poe tapped into what it means to be a human in the modern and sometimes frightening world.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: "Backs Against The Wall: The Howard Thurman Story explores the extraordinary life and legacy of one of the most important religious figures of the 20th century. Born the grandson of slaves, Thurman became a "spiritual foundation" for the Civil Rights Movement, inspiring many of its leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr, Jesse Jackson and Congressman John Lewis. In the mid-1930s, Thurman was...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Examine the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers: Ernest Hemingway. Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway's biography with excerpts from his work. The film penetrates the myth of Hemingway to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Poets, public figures and members of various communities join series creator Elisa New to engage in close readings of a single American poem. Each episode mixes lively discussion with archival materials, location footage, and vivid animation. The series offers audiences an immersive and accessible experience in reading poems that touch on many aspects of American life, past and present.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Discover how the 1900 outbreak of bubonic plague set off fear and anti-Asian sentiment in San Francisco.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Inside the Black Box spotlights the world's greatest Black artists within the entertainment industry. A 2022 Television Series. With ten-hour-long episodes with hosts Joe Morton and Tracey Moore. Reminiscent of "Inside the Actor's Studio with Robert Lipton." Features prominent actors, directors, writers, and producers of color and helps to further the never-ending dialectic on race in American...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Exposing the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis involved in the 2017 Charlottesville rally and exposing a neo-Nazi group that has actively recruited inside the US military, an investigation with ProPublica shows the group's terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after the 2017 Charlottesville rally. In the wake of the 2018 deadly anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

New, Elisa

Summary: People from all walks of life discuss various American poems.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Public Broadcasting Service 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Chronicles the final decades of the American frontier from the time of the Gold Rush until after the last gasp of the Indian wars at Wounded Knee.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Paramount Home Entertainment 2006

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "Frontline investigates the causes of the worst economic crisis in 70 years and how the government responded. [The film] chronicles the inside stories of the Bear Stearns deal, the Lehman Brothers' collapse, the propping up of insurance giant AIG and the $700 billion bailout. The film examines what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn't see, couldn't...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: WGBH Educational Foundation 2009

Copies Available at Woodmere