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.

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...

The four-part series hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chronicles the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people beyond the reach of the "White gaze." The series recounts the establishment of the Prince Hall Masons in 1775 through the formation of all-Black towns and business districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, destinations for leisure, and the social media phenomenon of Black Twitter. Professor Gates...

“Americans aren't wrong in seeing the West as a land of the future, a land in which astonishing things are possible. What they often are wrong about is that there's no price to be paid for that, that everybody can succeed, or that even what succeeds is necessarily the best for all concerned. The West is much more complicated than that."- Richard White. By 1877, the American conquest of the West was nearly complete. For every Indian in the West,...

Richard Wright - Black Boy is an Emmy Award winning film -- the first documentary film on the life, work and legacy of Richard Wright. Born outside Natchez, Mississippi in 1908, Wright overcame a childhood of poverty and oppression to become one of America's most influential writers. His first major works, Native Son and Black Boy, were runaway best sellers which are still mainstays of high school and college literature and composition classes. According...

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...

Robert F. Williams was the forefather of the Black Power movement and broke dramatic new ground by internationalizing the African American struggle. Negroes with Guns is not only an electrifying look at an historically erased leader, but also provides a thought-provoking examination of Black radicalism and resistance and serves as a launching pad for the study of Black liberation philosophies. Insightful interviews with historian Clayborne Carson,...

Documents the first battle to implement the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision fought in the small, rural town of Hoxie, Arkansas. How many people know that the first battle to implement the Brown vs Board of Education school desegregation decision was fought in the small, rural town of Hoxie, Arkansas? Or that it became a flashpoint because it offered a peaceful alternative to the bloody Massive Resistance campaigns of the...

Constructed from a wealth of archival footage, King: a filmed record ... Montgomery to Memphis is a monumental documentary that follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1955 to 1968, in his rise from regional activist to world-renowned leader of the Civil Rights movement. Rare footage of King's speeches, protests, and arrests are interspersed with scenes of other high-profile supporters and opponents of the cause, punctuated by heartfelt testimonials...

Investigates the reasons North Carolina, long seen as the most progressive state in the South, became home to the largest Klan organization in the country, with more members than all the other Southern states combined, during the 1960s.