Black History Month - Spotlight Series: Videos

Follows the man behind the beloved children's icon, Elmo, examining the life of puppeteer Kevin Clash. Provides behind-the-scenes views of Sesame Street and the Jim Henson Workshop and featuring interviews with Frank Oz, Rosie O'Donnell, Cheryl Henson, and Joan Ganz Cooney.

Focuses on Bessie Smith's transformation from a struggling young singer into 'The Empress of the Blues', who became one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s and is an enduring icon today.

Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences, at once liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming, of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond, it explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the African American experience for hundreds of years.

Profiles Kehinde Wiley, an African American painter based in New York known for his vibrant large-scale portraits of African Americans.

Punk before punk existed, three teenage brothers formed a band in the early 1970s in their spare bedroom. Equal parts rockumentary and family love story, this film chronicles the journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Death is now being credited as the first black punk band, and are finally receiving their long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.

Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, the movie tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.

Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. A misstep takes him from New York City to The Great Before, a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities before going to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human life. As Joe tries to show 22 what's great about life, he may discover the answers to the most important questions.

About a young Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, as he battles through one of his career defining cases.

Offered a plea deal by the FBI, William O'Neal infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to gather intelligence on Chairman Fred Hampton.

creen version of the life of Malcolm X, who through his religious conversion to Islam, found the strength to rise up from a criminal past to become an influential civil rights leader.

Based on Matt Ruff's novel, this series follows Korean war vet Atticus Freeman, his friend Letitia and his Uncle George on a journey across 1950's Jim Crow America where they face racist terrors and the terrifying monsters of an H.P. Lovecraft paperback.

From the well-publicized events at San Francisco State in 1968 to the image of black students with guns emerging from the takeover of the student union at Cornell University in April 1969, the struggle for a more relevant and meaningful education became a clarion call across the country in the late 1960s. Through the stories of the young men and women who were at the forefront of these efforts, Agents of Change examines the untold story of the racial conditions on college campuses and in the country that led to these protests, revealing how unprepared these institutions were when confronted by demands for black studies programs, safer housing, fairer judicial proceedings, and changes to democratize the institutions. The film's characters were at the crossroads of change and controversy at a pivotal time in America's history. Written by Ginzberg Films.

A look at three defining chapters in the life of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami. His epic journey to manhood is guided by the kindness, support and love of the community that helps raise him.

From 1860 to 1920 hundreds of US counties expelled all of their African American inhabitants. "Banished" visits three of these still all white towns today. Meanwhile the descendants of those displaced and disinherited seek redress. Banished vividly recovers the too-quickly forgotten history of racial cleansing in America when thousands of African Americans were driven from their homes and communities by violent, racist mobs. The film places these events in the context of present day race relations by following three concrete cases where black and white citizens warily explore if there is common ground for reconciliation over these expulsions.

Marlon Riggs' essay film Tongues untied gives voice to communities of black gay men, presenting their cultures and perspectives on the world as they confront racism, homophobia, and marginalization. It broke new artistic ground by mixing poetry (by Essex Hemphill and other artists), music, performance and Riggs' autobiographical revelations. The film was embraced by black gay audiences for its authentic representation of style, and culture, as well its fierce response to oppression. It opened up opportunities for dialogue among and across communities. Tongues Untied has been lauded by critics for its vision and its bold aesthetic advances, and vilified by anti-gay forces who used it to condemn government funding of the arts. It was even denounced from the floor of Congress. "Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act" is the rallying cry at the film's end and after more than 20 years, Tongues untied remains a celebrated vehicle for eloquent self-expression and liberation.

Ethnic notions is Marlon Riggs' Emmy-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the evolution of racial consciousness in America. Loyal Toms, carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, grinning Coons, savage Brutes, and wide-eyed Pickaninnies roll across the screen in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, minstrel shows, advertisements, folklore, household artifacts, even children's rhymes. These dehumanizing caricatures permeated popular culture from the 1820s to the Civil Rights period and implanted themselves deep in the American psyche. Narration by Esther Rolle and commentary by respected scholars shed light on the origins and devastating consequences of this 150 yearlong parade of bigotry. Ethnic Notions situates each stereotype historically in white society's shifting needs to justify racist oppression from slavery to the present day.

Today, there are more African Americans in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The prison population has exploded by 500% since the end of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. America locks up more of its racial and ethnic minorities than any other country (including South Africa at the height of apartheid). Mass incarceration has emerged as America's new caste system. How could this happen? With Philadelphia as an entry point, Broken on All Sides explores the intersection of race and poverty within the criminal justice system. . Presenting a historical narrative not often heard about prisons and crime, this documentary investigates the complex issues of discretion within the system, racial targeting, and the largest spike in the number of people incarcerated in our nation's history. Through interviews with people caught up in or involved with the system, this documentary answers and provokes questions on an issue walled-off from the public's scrutiny.

The Black Atlantic explores the global experiences that created the African-American people. Beginning a century before the first documented "20-and-odd" slaves came to Jamestown, Virginia, the episode portrays the earliest Africans, slave and free, who arrived on these shores. The transatlantic slave trade soon became a vast empire connecting three continents.

Recalling a watershed event in US politics, this Peabody Award-winning documentary takes an in-depth look at the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and the first to seek nomination for the highest office in the land. Shunned by the political establishment and the media, this longtime champion of marginalized Americans asked for support from people of color, women, gays, and young people newly empowered to vote at the age of 18. Chisholm's bid for an equal place on the presidential dais generated strong, even racist opposition. Yet her challenge to the status quo and her message about exercising the right to vote struck many as progressive and positive. Official Selection at the Sundance International Film Festival and the SXSW Film Festival.

In the turbulent 1960s, change was coming to America and the fault lines could no longer be ignored -- cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding, and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. A new revolutionary culture was emerging and it sought to drastically transform the system. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would, for a short time, put itself at the vanguard of that change. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature-length documentary to explore the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails. Master documentarian Stanley Nelson goes straight to the source, weaving a treasure trove of rare archival footage with the diverse group of voices of the people who were there: police, FBI informants, journalists, white supporters and detractors, and Black Panthers who remained loyal to the party and those who left it.

In this award-winning PBS documentary, archival footage and photographs are skillfully juxtaposed with interviews with editors, photographers and reporters from African-American newspapers, who toiled on the front lines to give voice to a culture disenfranchised by white media. Stanley Nelson's film sheds light on the courageous progenitors of the black press in America and examines the historic contributions and long-lasting legacy these papers have had on our society.