Black Lives Matter: Historical Context: Videos

"Emancipation ended slavery but only to replace it with an American form of apartheid, euphemistically known as Jim Crow, used to keep African Americans as second-class citizens. This four-part series constitutes a major cinematic achievement covering the years between Reconstruction and Civil Rights."

"Not all the civil rights victories of the ’60s were won at the cost of vicious beatings and mass arrests played out in front of television cameras. This documentary shows how many Southern cities were desegregated in a quieter fashion, with behind-the-scenes negotiations, secret deals, and controversial news blackouts."

"The story behind Billie Holiday's signature song examines the history of lynching; the interplay of race, labor, and the left; and popular culture as forces that would give rise to the Civil Rights movement."

"Ucovers the largely unknown and pivotal role played by black landowning families in the Deep South who controlled more than a million acres in the 1960s."

"The killing of four white students at Kent State University in 1970 left an indelible stain on the national consciousness, but most Americans know nothing of the three black students killed at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg two years earlier."

"This documentary tells the story of the explosive urban rebellion that tore Newark, New Jersey apart for nearly a week in the summer of 1967, sparked by the arrest of a black cabdriver by two white officers. Newark residents, police and civic officials, historians, and special commentators including Amiri Baraka, Bob Herbert, and Tom Hayden recount the details of the uprising. "

"The night of July 24th, 1964 started off normally enough in Rochester, New York, but by the next morning no one would look at race relations in the North the same way again."

"Formal addresses, panel discussions, and programs that took place at a conference and reunion unfolding over four days at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC."

This panel discusses some of the deeper political and cultural currents that fed the flow of political struggle in the 1960s, as well as the movements and institutions beyond U.S. borders that SNCC's ideas helped inform."

"Robert F. Williams was the forefather of the Black Power movement and broke dramatic new ground by internationalizing the African-American struggle. This program takes an electrifying look at the forgotten civil rights leader who dared to advocate armed self-defense in the face of racist terrorism in the Jim Crow South."

"A valuable and colorful examination of 40 years of changing representations of black masculinity in a significant area of popular culture: comic books. This genre's reach and impact has extended into other forms of cultural production such as movies and animated TV series."

"This Emmy Award–winning documentary reveals the origins of the dehumanizing African-American stereotypes found in popular culture, from the antebellum period to the era of the civil rights movement."

"Archival footage and interviews trace the history of African-American newspapers and journalism from the 19th century to the Civil Rights movement."

"This case study in media bias examines how ABC, CBS, and NBC network affiliates covered civil unrest in Miami’s predominantly black Liberty Hill neighborhood following the 1980 acquittal of police officers for the killing of a local resident."

"Shot in 1969 in San Francisco, it’s an exemplar of 1960s activist filmmaking, featuring an interview from jail with Black Panthers cofounder Huey Newton, as well as footage of cofounder Bobby Seale explaining its Ten Point Program and Eldridge Cleaver discussing the Panthers’ appeal to the black community."

"Stokely Carmichael, a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), became a national figure when he called for "black power" in 1966. He became a member of the Black Panther Party and a vocal critic of the Vietnam War before emigrating to Guinea."

"The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, armed with law books, breakfast programs, and guns, is born in Oakland. Substandard teaching practices prompt parents to gain educational control of a Brooklyn school district but then lead them to a showdown with New York City’s teachers’ union."

"Viewers learn about Carmichael's involvement in the Black Power Movement."

"Stokely Carmichael calls for black liberation."

"The new radicalism, spawned at the lunch counters of Mississippi in the early 1960s and nurtured in the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, has changed its direction - from protest to resistance."

"Black Panther Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton was incarcerated in the Oakland jail after police stormed a house to round up Black Panther leaders."