African American History

In Black and White is the first video series devoted to the life and work of contemporary African American authors. It introduces students and general readers to six of America's most talented and challenging writers: Charles Johnson, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman and August Wilson.

These authors' work is helping to define a new multi-cultural American literary canon for the 21st Century. As Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison observes in her program, "American literature is incoherent without the contribution of African Americans."

This video gives an overview of 20th century African American theatre and performance and includes scenes from and discussion of "A Raisin in the Sun", "Purlie Victorious", and "The Colored Museum".

This segment of Sunday Morning is about African American veterans. It looks at African-Americans past and future involvement in the United States military.

This program highlights 100 years of the African-American experience through the life of Isaac Pope, an unassuming WWII hero who was the grandson of slaves and the son of sharecroppers. He reflects on his struggle to achieve the "American Dream" and reveals the path forward in order to achieve racial peace and harmony in the South. Pope was the First Sergeant of the 969th Field Artillery Battery and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge—one of the deadliest battles of WWII. After the war, Isaac Pope continued to serve as a mentor, church leader and advocate for civil and workplace rights. Filmmaker Paula J. Caplan, whose father served with Pope, presents a poignant portrait of the man and the African-American experience.

n an engaging and personal TEDtalk—with cameo appearances by his grandmother and Rosa Parks—human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These issues, which are wrapped up in America's unexamined history, are rarely talked about with this level of candor, insight, and persuasiveness. Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative.

African-American women have captured the moral imagination of mainstream America through their essays, novels, poetry, and other artistic endeavors, breaching the static lines of race, gender, and class. How have their reflections so clearly articulated the hopes and philosophies of so many? In this program, writers Alice Walker and bell hooks and Ohio State University faculty Dr. Martha Wharton, of the departments of African-American studies and women’s studies, and Dr. Valerie Lee, of the departments of English and women’s studies, examine the emergence of African-American women as popular and powerful voices of social conscience.

Written and presented by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, this six-hour series explores 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.

Commencing with the origins of slavery in Africa, the series moves through five centuries of remarkable historic events right up to the present -- when America is led by a black president, yet remains a nation deeply divided by race.

By highlighting the tragedies, triumphs and contradictions of the black experience, the series reveals to viewers that the African-American community has never been a uniform entity, and that its members have been actively debating their differences from their first days in this country.

Throughout the course of the series, viewers will see that the road to freedom for black people in America has not been linear, but more like the course of a river, full of loops and eddies, slowing, and occasionally reversing the current of progress.

THE NEW BLACK boldy examines the controversial and challenging issues the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community's institutional pillar -- the black church and reveals the Christian right wing's strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda.

The documentary makes a compelling case that the fight for LGBT rights in Black communities is an extension of the Black Freedom Struggle. It takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson rose from humble origins to cross baseball's color line and become one of the most beloved men in America. A fierce integrationist, Robinson used his immense fame to speak out against the discrimination he saw on and off the field, angering fans, the press, and even teammates who had once celebrated him for "turning the other cheek."

After baseball, he was a widely-read newspaper columnist, divisive political activist and tireless advocate for civil rights, who later struggled to remain relevant as diabetes crippled his body and a new generation of leaders set a more militant course for the civil rights movement.

Librarian curated list of audio resources from Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company.