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Summary: Throughout the 1930s and 40s, John L. Lewis was the most powerful figure in the U.S. labor movement. This episode of A&E Classroom examines the president of the United Mine Workers of America, an independent and strong-willed leader who secured rights and benefits for the miners. A major force behind the founding of the CIO, Lewis also played a role in Franklin D. Roosevelt's election.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1985

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

McCarter, Jeremy

Summary: "What does it mean to live for your ideals ... and to risk dying for them? This book tells the story of young American radicals who sensed a moment of unprecedented promise for American life--politically, socially, culturally--and struggled to bring it about, only to see a cataclysmic war sweep it away. Based on six years of extensive archival research, Jeremy McCarter's dramatic narrative...

Format: text

Publisher / Publication Date: Random House 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 920 MCC

Summary: The crash of 1929 left a country—once reeling with optimism—with 25% of its citizens unemployed and at a near complete loss of hope. But in March, 1933, within weeks of his election, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped in with a solution: the Civilian Conservation Corps. As told by four veterans of this unique organization, The Civilian Conservation Corps, from the PBS American...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

Summary: This documentary examines the career of the pioneer black nationalist; it ranges from his birthplace in Jamaica to the United States, Europe, and Africa. Garvey (1887-1940) captured the imagination of black Americans during the 1920s with his impassioned call for an independent black nation. The program shows how Garvey's legacy inspired the civil rights movement in the U.S. and liberation...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005

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Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)

Format: text

Publisher / Publication Date: Ohio University Press 2004

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 973.8 MEN

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: 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

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

Summary: With farms and factories falling victim to the Great Depression, jazz was one of the few American industries poised for explosive growth. This program explores the art form during the first half of the decade, a period in which New York City usurped Chicago as America's jazz capital, Louis Armstrong revolutionized Broadway song craft, and Chick Webb forged his big-band sound at the Savoy...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011

View online at AVOD

Summary: Amid the rise of suburbia, television, rock 'n' roll, and the baby boom generation, jazz lost a beloved and burned-out star: Billie Holiday. But the music still had its two guiding lights. In 1956, the first year Elvis topped the charts, Duke Ellington recaptured the nation's ear with a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. The next year, Louis Armstrong made headlines when he condemned...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011

View online at AVOD

Summary: During the early 20th century, Washington, D.C., was the cultural capital of black America. Prefiguring Harlem in the 1920s, D.C.'s Uptown area nurtured dynamic figures such as Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Mary Church Terrell, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Dr. Charles Drew. In this program, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith tells the often-overlooked story of the heyday,...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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

View online at AVOD

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...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001

View online at AVOD

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