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Race in America

Explore films and new specials focused on race

Asian Americans

Asian Americans is a five-hour film series that will chronicle the contributions, and challenges of Asian Americans, the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. Personal histories and new academic research will cast a fresh lens on U.S. history and the role Asian Americans have played in it.

Policing the Police 2020

George Floyd's killing triggered mass demonstrations nationwide calling for racial justice and police accountability in the United States. In the wake of those protests, New Yorker writer and historian Jelani Cobb returns to a troubled police department he first visited four years ago to examine whether reform can work, and how police departments can be held accountable.

Freedom Riders

Freedom Riders is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws in order to test and challenge a segregated interstate travel system, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

Peace Officer

In Peace Officer, the increasingly tense relationship between law enforcement and the public is seen through the eyes of someone who's been on both sides: “Dub” Lawrence, a former sheriff who established Utah's first SWAT team, only to see the same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later.

Cooked: Survival by Zipcode

Cooked: Survival by Zip Code tells the story of the tragic 1995 Chicago heatwave, the most traumatic in U.S. history, in which 739 citizens died over the course of just a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American. Cooked is a story about life, death, and the politics of crisis in an American city that asks the question: Was this a one-time tragedy, or an appalling trend?

The First Rainbow Coalition

In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party formed alliances across ethnic and racial lines with other community-based movements in the city, including Latino group the Young Lords and southern whites the Young Patriots. Banding together in one of postwar America's most segregated cities to confront issues like police brutality and substandard housing, they called themselves the Rainbow Coalition.

The Talk - Race in America

THE TALK is a two-hour documentary about the increasingly necessary conversation taking place in homes and communities across the country between parents of color and their children, especially sons, about how to behave if they are ever stopped by the police.

POV Shorts: The Changing Same

In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where one native resident runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history.

Struggle & Hope

Following the Civil War, all-Black towns emerged in what is now modern-day Oklahoma. Initially founded in an effort to convince the U.S. to create an all-Black state, only a few towns cling heroically to life. STRUGGLE & HOPE gives voice to the stories of the last remaining residents, while charting their fight to ensure their towns retain independence, character and hope for a better future.

Growing Up Black

What does it mean to grow up Black in America, a country too often divided by race? Bullied by a group of kids, Ben finds out he is not alone; Sue shares the realities of raising kids of a different race; and Angie learns about how far we have come, and how far we have to go in a chance encounter she will never forget. Three stories, three interpretations of GROWING UP BLACK, hosted by Wes Hazard.

Metcalfe Park: Black Vote Rising

On April 7, Wisconsin held its primary election at the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. An estimated ~16% of Black voters were disenfranchised in Milwaukee. Danell Cross and Melody McCurtis are determined to prevent this from happening again. Follow the mother-daughter activist team as they organize their Black community to prepare for the 2020 presidential election and its challenges.

The Area

THE AREA is the odyssey of a South Side Chicago neighborhood, where hundreds of Black American families are being expelled from their homes by a multi-billion-dollar freight company. The documentary film follows homeowner-turned-activist Deborah Payne, who vows to be "the last house standing," as she and her neighbors fight the displacement that looms ahead.

Juneteenth Jamboree: Soldiers, Cowboys and Indians

African American opportunities appeared in the frontier west after the Civil War. Black cowboys permeated the land. Buffalo soldiers were recruited to take up the Indian Wars. And a Black Seminole tribe chose freedom over oppression.

Considering Matthew Shepard

In October of 1998, Matthew Shepard was beaten, tortured, and left to die. Twenty years later his legacy is remembered in a unique production that uses music, poetry and interviews and to explore a pivotal time in our history. When a hate crime is committed, what does it mean to be a victim, a parent, a community member, a perpetrator? How do we learn to find hope in hopeless situations?

BLACKADEMICS TV

Top Black Studies scholars, artists and activists share projects and research focused on education, performance and empowerment.

Political blackness in multiracial Britain. Nationalism in Europe. Literacy in an age of lies. Talks by Mohan Ambikaipaker, Terri E. Givens, and Kevin Michael Foster.

Blood Memory

For Sandy White Hawk, the story of America’s Indian Adoption Era is not one of saving children but of destroying families and tribes. As an adoption survivor, Sandy sets out to reclaim the missing pieces of her stolen past only to discover that her’s was not an isolated case. BLOOD MEMORY explores the communal healing that is sparked by the return of this stolen generation.

Shell Shocked

New Orleans is one of the "murder capitals" of the U.S.; statistics show murder rates are 4-6x higher than the national average. 80% of the victims are black males, mostly in their teenage years. Shell Shocked starts at the surface of the teen murder epidemic and delves into the hearts and minds of those whose lives are most deeply impacted.

BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez

The personal is political. "BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez" is a portrait of the artist, revealing her uncompromising life as she raised her voice in the name of black culture, civil rights, women's liberation, and world peace. The film captures Sanchez's commitment to cultural specificity while connecting history and humanities to the mainstream.

Tutwiler

TUTWILER takes audiences into Alabama’s only maximum security women’s penitentiary, Julia Tutwiler Prison, and explores the Alabama Prison Birth Project, helping expectant and new mothers learn childbirth and parenting skills while dealing with the pain of being separated from their children.

Where the Pavement Ends

Transporting viewers to Missouri towns - then all-Black Kinloch and the all-white community of Ferguson, examining the shared histories and deep racial divides affecting both. Through recordings, photographs and recollections, WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS draws parallels between a 1960s dispute over a physical barricade erected between the towns and the 2014 shooting death by police of Michael Brown.

Beyond the Tap

The national spotlight is on Flint, Michigan in the midst of a water crisis that has been mismanaged by government officials and threatens its citizens. But the city is not alone. Local, USA: BEYOND THE TAP examines the human, economic, and political costs of one of America's greatest threats: our crumbling infrastructure.

Pyne Poynt

The youth of Camden, NJ, one of America’s poorest cities, don’t know who to fear more - the police or the violent drug dealers. Bryan Morton leads a charge to reclaim Pyne Poynt Park as a safe space for little league teams and the community. Against all odds, Morton rallies an array of stakeholders and transforms Pyne Poynt into a field of dreams where the youth can play freely in the field.

Island Soldier

Follow the Nena family as they grieve the loss of their son - his death in Afghanistan makes waves through the community where nearly everyone is connected to the U.S. military. Known as a "recruiter's paradise," Micronesia contributes a disproportionate number of soldiers to the armed forces, who cannot receive benefits...yet young men leave their families behind in pursuit of the American Dream.

Streaming on Passport

Reconstruction: America After The Civil War

Reconstruction: America After The Civil War explores the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of profound loss, massive destruction, and revolutionary social change.

The African Americans: Many Rivers To Cross

This series chronicles the full sweep of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent right up to today when America remains a nation deeply divided by race.

Always in Season

Always in Season follows the tragedy of African American teenager Lennon Lacy, who in August 2014, was found hanging from a swing set in North Carolina. His death was ruled a suicide, but Lennon’s mother and family believe he was lynched. The film chronicles her quest to learn the truth and takes a closer look at the lingering impact of more than a century of lynching African Americans.

First Vote

With unparalleled access to a diverse cross section of politically engaged Chinese Americans, FIRST VOTE offers a character-driven verité look at Chinese American electoral organizing in North Carolina and Ohio. The film weaves their stories from the presidential election of 2016 to the 2018 midterms, and explores the intersections between immigration, voting rights and racial justice.

Latino Vote: Dispatches from the Battleground

Get an inside look at the high-stakes effort to get out the Latino vote in the 2020 election. Political candidates are focused on maximizing turnout and support from Latinos, poised to be the largest non-white voting bloc.