Discover how television has reflected the African American experience in this retrospective of the medium’s first half-century. Actors, writers and historians discuss the image of black America on television from…
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
The tale of the cigarette-maker Carmen and the Spanish cavalry soldier Don Jose is translated into a modern-day story of a parachute factory worker and a stalwart GI named Joe…
Miriam Makeba was one of the first African musicians who won international stardom and whose music was always anchored in her traditional South African roots. Miriam Makeba was forced into…
A feature documentary about Jackie “Moms” Mabley, an African-American stand-up comic and show-biz pioneer who emerged from the Chitlin’ Circuit of African-American Vaudeville to become a mainstream star. Once billed…
For one week in February 1968, Johnny Carson gave up his chair to Harry Belafonte, the first time an African-American had hosted a late night TV show for a whole…
Robert Altman’s story – a riff on race, class, and power – cross-cuts between two kidnappings and a background of corrupt politics and virtuoso jazz music. It all takes place…
Morris Mishkin is a elderly religious Jew in New York. His wife Fanny is very ill. He’s a tailor, but he can’t work because his back has given out. He…
Most people know the lasting legacy of Harry Belafonte, the entertainer. This film unearths his significant contribution to and his leadership in the civil rights movement in America and to…
Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the United States.
Examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in US society from 1967 to 1975. It features footage of the movement shot by Swedish journalists in the United States during…
A documentary about Barbara Smith Conrad, a gifted University of Texas music student who finds herself at the epicenter of racial controversy, struggling against the odds and ultimately ascending to…
On a Caribbean island, a rich landowner’s son, Maxwell Fleury, is fighting for political office against black labor leader David Boyeur. As if the contentious election weren’t enough, there are…
A report on the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, a historic event that gathered Black voices from across the political spectrum, among them Jesse Jackson,…
This revealing portrait of comedian, activist, pop-culture icon and thought leader Dick Gregory documents his many personal reinventions throughout the decades, from celebrity to civil rights hero and beyond, while…
A chronicle of the final chapters of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, revealing a conflicted leader who faced an onslaught of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum.
On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, one fearless black pioneer reconceived a Harlem Renaissance for a new era, ushering giants and rising stars of black American culture onto…
