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African Americans History Civil rights United States Constitutional history United States Constitutional law United States History Liberty Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) Reconstruction (US history, 1865-1877) Social structure United States Constitution United States History Civil War, 1861-1865Summary: The U.S. Constitution is the world's oldest written charter of government in continuous effect. Much of the success of this document can be attributed to the way the Constitution has changed to meet the needs of the American people. The framers of the Constitution wisely anticipated the need to make changes to the Constitution as the world itself changed. Between 1787, when the Constitution was...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The U.S. Constitution is the world's oldest written charter of government in continuous effect. Much of the success of this document can be attributed to the way the Constitution has changed to meet the needs of the American people. The framers of the Constitution wisely anticipated the need to make changes to the Constitution as the world itself changed. Between 1787, when the Constitution was...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The History Channel’s acclaimed series, Civil War Journal, takes viewers beyond the battles and into the personal stories of the War Between the States. Drawing on diaries, photographs and dramatic re-enactments, the intimate side of the epic conflict is exposed. This program covers the three-day battle at Gettysburg including Pickett's Charge and the Gettysburg Address.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1997
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the legal issues relevant to the 13th Amendment and the controversy surrounding its passage. Legal experts explain the basis of the debate; historical reenactments of those debates provide viewers with insights into its social and economic underpinnings.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Uncover the events leading up to the tragic assassination of President Abraham Lincoln with this A&E Special. This program untangles the myths and misconceptions, and offers a deeper understanding of the emotional state of the country in April, 1865, that precipitated such an act of violence.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1996
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program presents the Spanish-American War as the defining event of America’s rise to superpower status.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1998
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this special performance edition of the Journal, actor Sam Waterston and historian Harold Holzer explore Lincoln's legacy and legend as defined in poetry and prose by significant American writers who, across the decades, have wrestled to envision Lincoln through the lens of their own experiences and times. Afterward, Bill Moyers sits down with Waterston and Holzer to talk about the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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: It was the ultimate face-off between North and South - a deadly clash over race, rights, and the future of freedom in America. This program offers an up-close look at the years that preceded the American Civil War. Through individual accounts, re-creations, interviews, and poignant photography, this program details how the rising tide of abolitionism met the deeply entrenched slave economy - a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1998
View online at AVOD
Summary: The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass comes back to life in this acclaimed theatrical performance featuring Fred Morsell, as he dramatically re-creates Douglass's famous speech on slavery and human rights. With an eloquence and intelligence rarely matched, Frederick Douglass became a giant in the struggle against racial injustice. He called upon all Americans of every color to work to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1865, the laying down of arms was just the beginning of the long battle for equal rights facing African-Americans. After documenting the final months of the War Between the States-Lincoln's second inauguration, Sherman's march through the Carolinas, the Siege of Petersburg, the destruction of Richmond, General Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and Lincoln's assassination-this program considers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: This episode of Reconstruction shows how the whole Southern world was turned upside down. And yet, despite these challenges and terrible racial violence in this period, so much was accomplished. Reconstruction brought public schools to the South for the first time. Black Southerners were elected to local and national offices. And the nation committed itself to equality under the law for all...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
Summary: For most African-Americans, the end of slavery did little to improve their lives in post-Civil War America. Both Northerners and Southerners refused to accept them as equals, and in many cases looked the other way while their rights were regularly abused on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. This program presents a grim picture of the black experience after slavery as seen through the eyes of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program carries the narrative of the Civil War forward into its opening months, during which hopes for a quick victory died alongside thousands of soldiers during clashes fought on an unprecedented scale. Advances in weaponry and key battles-First and Second Bull Run/Manassas, Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing, and Antietam/Sharpsburg-are analyzed, as well as the possibility of British intervention...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: The History Channel’s acclaimed series, Civil War Journal, takes viewers beyond the battles and into the personal stories of the War Between the States. Drawing on diaries, photographs and dramatic re-enactments, the intimate side of the epic conflict is exposed. This program recounts how General Ulysses S. Grant's Union forces bombarded and starved the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1996
View online at AVOD
Summary: The History Channel’s acclaimed series, Civil War Journal, takes viewers beyond the battles and into the personal stories of the War Between the States. Drawing on diaries, photographs and dramatic re-enactments, the intimate side of the epic conflict is exposed. This episode examines President Lincoln’s appointment of General Ulysses S. Grant as commander of the Union Army.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1997
View online at AVOD
Summary: This episode of Reconstruction shows how, in just a few years, a series of stunning events - the Emancipation Proclamation, the Fourteenth Amendment granting ex-slaves citizenship in 1868, the enfranchisement of blacks the following year - reversed centuries-old patterns of race relations in America. People who for generations had been the property of others were now free to run their own lives.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
Summary: Before the Civil War broke out, and during it as well, the “Underground Railroad” operated as an effective, secret network for African-Americans to escape the bonds of slavery. Roots of Resistance, from the PBS American Experience collection, chronicles the workings of the Underground Railroad, from its creation and support by ex-slaves and white abolitionists, to its up-close portrayal of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: Between 1790 and 1860, thousands of slaves fled the South for liberation on the "Underground Railroad," a system of invisible tracks and anonymous conductors who gave shelter to fugitive slaves. Through interviews with national experts, and examination of archival records and artifacts, this program provides an overview of the underground movement. In addition to interviews with descendants of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Since the penning of the Declaration of Independence, America had been steadily evolving into two distinctly different societies-and by 1861, sectional differences had reached the flashpoint. This program addresses abolitionist fervor in the industrialized North; the rising clamor for secession in the antebellum South, an agrarian economy transfigured by the cotton gin; and the political...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Union's victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg marked a crucial turning point in the Civil War. This program thoroughly examines those pivotal campaigns, along with the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation on both the North and South, problems within the Jefferson Davis administration, the beginnings of dissent in the South, and the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Although slavery was abolished in New York State on July 4th, 1827, America's slave-based cotton trade was not, as bales from the South continued to enter New York City for transshipment to Europe. In this program, James Oliver Horton, historian emeritus at the Smithsonian, talks with NewsHour correspondent Gwen Ifill about slavery's impact on New York City during the first half of the 19th...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the impact of slavery and the Civil War in the West. Viewers learn about “Bleeding Kansas,” the “Gettysburg of the West,” and how the end of the fighting brought on the beginning of the military campaign against Indians. Included are portrayals of individuals who resisted federal authority, such as Brigham Young and Black Kettle.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1996
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the strain of total war increased on both sides, the Union and Confederacy each bitterly fought on in an effort to break the other's will. Topics in this program range from draft riots in the North and the Union's recruitment of African-Americans, to the hardships imposed on the South by the ongoing coastal blockade and Sherman's March to the Sea, to the wartime leadership of Lincoln and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009