Black History

Retraces the life and legacy of an American civil rights pioneer who set more than 20 world records in speed cycling during the heart of Jim Crow America.

Major Taylor: Champion of the Race airs Monday, February 24, 2025 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streaming on the WXXI app.

In a word, I was a pioneer, and therefore had to blaze my own trail.” – Marshall “Major” Taylor. He earned nicknames that often equated to the most powerful forces in heaven and earth: The Cyclone. The Whirlwind. The Comet. He earned the respect of civil rights pioneer Booker T. Washington and shook the hand of President Theodore Roosevelt, who sought out the great champion to congratulate him. Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor was the world’s first Black sports superstar. Reporters simply called him “The Fastest Man in the World.”

By the time he was in his early 20s, Major Taylor had claimed victory in the world cycling championship, the American cycling crown, and had set dozens of world speed cycling records all while having to endure withering racial pressures.

Photo: Hazel Scott/ Credit: Everett

The story of Walter White and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

American Experience “Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP,” premiering Tuesday, February 25, 2025 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streaming on the WXXI app

 As the story is usually told, the civil rights movement began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus. In fact, the stage had been set decades before, by activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who braved the appalling violence and oppression of the Jim Crow era. Some of their names are familiar: W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall. They all played prominent roles in the NAACP, the preeminent civil rights organization of the era. But Walter White — arguably the most influential Black man in mid-century America and the leader of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955 — has been all but forgotten. American Experience traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and seeks to explain his disappearance from our history. 

Photo:Dr. Ralph Bunche (right) is greeted at the Dallas airport as he arrives to give address at the closing session of the 45th annual convention of the NAACP. At left is the Rev. Ernest C. Estell, Jr., pastor of the St. John Baptist Church in Dallas and chairman of the Dallas convention committee, and (center) Walter White, NAACP executive secretary, 1954. /Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Visual Materials from the NAACP Records

Hazel Scott was one of the most revered stars of the early 20th century.

American Masters – The Disappearance of Miss Scott, premieres Friday, February 21, 2025 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streaming on the WXXI app.

Not only was Scott a beloved musical sensation, but she also channeled her talents into Hollywood stardom, becoming the first Black American to host their own television show. Discover her storied life, from her childhood as a musical prodigy in Trinidad to her prolific career on stage and the silver screen in this new documentary.

Featuring archival footage and stills, performance clips, animation, and interviews, The Disappearance of Miss Scott is the first known documentary centering on the jazz virtuoso’s life, detailing her awe-inspiring talents on the piano, how she used her star power to be an influential voice of the nascent Civil Rights Movement, and her life in Paris after being blacklisted from Hollywood during the 1950s Red Scare. Her career in the US ultimately ended after she defended herself and her colleagues in front of the House Un-American Committee, and her story has been mostly silenced until this film. Excerpts of Scott’s unpublished autobiography are voiced by Emmy Award-winning actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, revealing Scott as a woman who would not compromise on her beliefs, and are complemented by interviews with country star Mickey Guyton, actresses Amanda Seales and Tracie Thoms, jazz musicians Camille Thurman and Jason Moran, and Adam Clayton Powell III, Hazel Scott’s only son.

Photo: Hazel Scott/ Credit: Everett

Examines the little-known fight for school desegregation led by a handful of Ohio mothers and their children in 1954. 

The Lincoln School Story airs Friday, February 7 at 10:30 p.m. WXXI-TV

In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, school districts nationwide were mandated to integrate. But when African American mothers in Hillsboro, Ohio, tried to enroll their children in the local, historically white schools, the school board refused to comply. Five mothers and their children took the school board to court and eventually their children became the first Black students to attend a high-quality local elementary school. Their judicial victory in the Midwest inspired Black parents in communities across the country.

Photo: (L-R) Zella Mae Cumberland, Gertrude Clemons and Minnie Speach. Photo credit: Press Gazette

The untold story behind the murder trial of Black Panther leader Huey Newton.

American Justice on Trial airs Monday, February 3 at 9 p.m. WXXI-TV

This film tells the story of the death penalty case that put racism on trial in a U.S. courtroom in the fall of 1968. Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party co-founder, was accused of killing a white policeman and wounding another after a pre-dawn car stop in Oakland. Newton himself suffered a near-fatal wound. As the trial neared its end, J. Edgar Hoover branded the Black Panthers the greatest internal threat to American security. Earlier that year, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy rocked a nation already bitterly divided over the Vietnam War. As the jury deliberated Newton’s fate, America was a tinderbox waiting to explode.

At his trial, Newton and his maverick defense team led by Charles Garry and his then rare female co-counsel Fay Stender, defended the Panthers as a response to 400 years of racism and accused the policemen of racial profiling, insisting Newton had only acted in self-defense. Their unprecedented challenges to structural racism in the jury selection process were revolutionary and risky. If the Newton jury came back with the widely expected first degree murder verdict against the charismatic black militant, Newton would have faced the death penalty and national riots were anticipated. But Newton’s defense team redefined a “jury of one’s peers,” and a groundbreaking diverse jury headed by pioneering Black foreman David Harper delivered a shocking verdict that still reverberates today.

Photo: Huey Newton and his defense team Charles Garry & Fay Stender hold a press conference after the verdict/Credit: Ilka Hartmann