Tired of watching local government ignore their communities’ interests, five diverse female activists run for municipal office in Denver – one of the U.S.’s fastest gentrifying cities. A story about an engaged community outrunning the deep pockets of the political establishment, RUNNING WITH MY GIRLS demonstrates that building a new kind of political power is not just aspirational but possible. Available to watch on-demand through 9/13/24
Black History
Two Wars l The Road to Integration • WXXI-TV
Segregation and the eventual integration of the United States Military.
Two Wars l The Road to Integration airs Tuesday, February 27 at 10:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV.
Two Wars | The Road to Integration tackles the topic of segregation and eventual integration of the United States Military. Since the earliest days of the Republic, African Americans have been part of the nation’s fighting force. African American service members in the United States Military fought to defend the very freedoms they could not enjoy as citizens.
Photo: WWII soldiers • Credit: American Public Television
A Conversation with NAACP Image Award Recipient, Nikki Giovanni • On-Demand Facebook Live Event
Legendary Poet, Nikki Giovanni, Reflects on Her Literary Works that Inspire and Transcend the Imagination.
Watch PBS Books Event with Nikki Giovanni from Wednesday, April 3 at 8pm The event is archived here.
As part of its Wright Conversations series, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History presents Nikki Giovanni, one of this country’s most widely read poets and one of America’s most renowned poets worldwide. Her poem, “Knoxville, Tennessee,” is arguably the single literary work most often associated with that city. Giovanni has received numerous awards in the course of her career, including seven Image Awards from the N.A.A.C.P., more than two-dozen honorary degrees, the first Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, the Langston Hughes Medal for Poetry, and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award; additionally, Oprah Winfrey recognized her in 2005 as one of twenty-five “Living Legends.” She continues to teach, write, and publish books. Her most recent collection, “Make Me Rain,” was released in October of 2020.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Poet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, she and her sister returned to Knoxville each summer to visit their grandparents. Nikki graduated with honors in history from her grandfather’s alma mater, Fisk University. Since 1987, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is an Emerita Professor in the Department of English. She has been nominated for a Grammy and a finalist for the National Book Award. She has authored three New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-sellers, highly unusual for a poet. For more information in the words of the poet herself, visit here.
Independent Lens: Breaking the News On-Demand
Frustrated by the lack of representation in the media, a group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists launched The 19th*, a digital news startup whose work is guided by elevating the voices often left out of the American story. Watch on-demand through 5/19/24.
Independent Lens: Breaking the News follows the launch of The 19th*, a news startup that seeks to change the white, male-dominated news industry, asking who’s been omitted from mainstream coverage and how to include them. Bringing the viewer right into the newsroom during tense moments as the startup launches in a pandemic amid rising social unrest, the film provides an inside view of what it takes to challenge the status quo and break the mold in American media.
Shot over three years, the film documents the honest discussions at The 19th* around race and gender equity, revealing that change doesn’t come easy, and showcases how they confront these challenges both as a workplace and in their journalism. But this film is about more than a newsroom; it’s about America in flux and the voices that are often left out of the American story.
NPR Black Stories, Black Truths:
A special podcast series featuring black lives, experiences and voices brought to you by NPR.
The Black Stories, Black Truths Podcast Series: NPR’s best podcast episodes and features from across the Black experience. Some might make you laugh. Some might make you feel inspired. Others might make you uncomfortable. And some might make you feel all of that in the same five-minute span.
See Black Stories, Black Truths Videos promoting the podcast series and—most importantly—a celebration of Black voices in journalism. Our voices aren’t a monolith, and neither is public media.
Great Performances: The Magic of Spirituals • WXXI-TV
Discover the behind-the-scenes story of Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle’s famed concert at Carnegie Hall on March 18, 1990.
Great Performances: The Magic of Spirituals airs Friday, February 16 at 10:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV.
With legendary African American contralto Marian Anderson in attendance, many wondered if the two singers would compete or join forces and sing together. Showcasing extended excerpts of Norman and Battle in performance, the documentary examines the preparation required and the historic concert’s enduring impact. New interviews and reminiscences are featured from the concert’s producer Peter Gelb (currently Met Opera General Manager), soprano Angel Blue, author and playwright Darryl Pinckney, arranger and composer Evelyn Simpson-Curenton, Harlem Gospel Singers’ founder Queen Esther Marrow, Fisk Jubilee Singers Musical Director Paul T. Kwami, and jazz and opera singer Jocelyn B. Smith.
Photo: Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle • Credit: PBS
The Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights On-Demand
The Niagara Movement | The Early Battle for Civil Rights explores the Black elite and intellectual society at the turn of the 20th century, a class rarely presented. It examines the heated debate and conflict between W.E.B DuBois and William Monroe Trotter with Booker T. Washington on how to best uplift the race and secure equality for their community.
The Niagara Movement PBS LearningMedia Collection: Explore Video Shorts and Lessons
About the Film:
The Niagara Movement: the Early Battle for Civil Rights, a powerful hour-long documentary by WNED PBS, delves deep into the movement’s pivotal role in shaping the civil rights landscape. The documentary explores the Black elite and intellectual society at the turn of the 20th century and examines the heated debate and conflict W.E.B DuBois and William Monroe Trotter had with Booker T. Washington on how to best uplift the race and secure equality for Black Americans.
In July 1905, a group of 29 men, including Black intellectuals, clergy, writers, newspapermen, and activists, was formed and led by a young sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois. The group adopted the resolutions which lead to the founding of the Niagara Movement. Its Declaration of Principles stated, in part: “We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression, and apologetic before insults.”
The Niagara Movement was, in large part, a repudiation of the methods of Booker T. Washington, the unchallenged leader of Black liberation at the time. This was a time of widespread violence against Black Americans, as the end of Reconstruction brought oppressive Jim Crow laws and widespread lynching. How were Black Americans to respond to this oppression? Washington argued that the progress for Black Americans depended on practical but limited education – that legitimate protest against white supremacy would only make things worse, and that rights were secondary to survival. The formation of the Niagara Movement was a counter-movement: a national group dedicated to accepting nothing less than full civil rights.
Although the Movement was disbanded only four years after its inception, its impact and legacy have proven long-lasting. The Niagara Movement was a critical turning point in fighting inequality and it laid the cornerstone of the modern American Civil Rights Movement. Its influence and legacy are wide: it changed the tone and approach to Black protest in America, it created tactics, such as fighting in the courts for integration, that would be used by the NAACP, and it influenced the ideology of both the “black power” movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter movement of the 21st century.
GOSPEL Live! Presented by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. • WXXI-TV
From the blues to hip-hop, African Americans have been the driving force of sonic innovation for over a century.
GOSPEL Live! Presented by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. airs Tuesday, June 4 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV.
Musical styles come and go, but there is one sound that has been a constant source of strength, courage, and wisdom from the pulpit to the choir lofts on any given Sunday: the gospel. The gospel concert special, produced by McGee Media, Done + Dusted, and Friends at Work, celebrates gospel music and its extraordinary impact on culture and pop music. Featuring the biggest names in gospel music together with the biggest stars from the world of pop, R&B and beyond, the concert will be recorded in Los Angeles in front of a live audience, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This one-hour PBS special, from showrunner Kristen V. Carter, will both be inspired by and build excitement for the landmark four-hour history series, GOSPEL.
Photo: Lena Byrd Miles • Credit: PBS