February is Black History Month

Celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of Black Americans and other people of African descent. Learn more about their triumphs, successes, resilience, and the legacies and marks they leave in United States history. 

Below are some documentaries from the Films on Demand database that highlight Black History. Enjoy!

Making Black America Through the Grapevine

Hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this four episode series chronicles the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people-beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” Gates takes viewers into an extraordinary world that showcases Black people’s ability to collectively prosper, defy white supremacy and define Blackness in ways that transformed America itself.
 

Talking Black in America

This documentary series explores the most controversial and misunderstood language variety in the United States: African American Language (AAL). With the perspectives of everyday people and the guidance of historians, linguists, and educators, the series showcases the history of the language, the symbolic role it plays in the lives of African Americans, and the tremendous impact on the language and culture of the United States.
 

Black Art: In the Absence of Light

At the heart of this feature documentary is the groundbreaking Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibition curated by the late African American artist and scholar David Driskell in 1976. Held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this pioneering exhibit featured more than 200 works of art by 63 artists and cemented the essential contributions of Black artists in America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The film shines a light on the exhibition’s extraordinary impact on generations of African American artists who have staked a claim on their rightful place within the 21st-century art world.
 

400 Years Taking the Knee

This two-part special begins with first years of the European slave trade but fundamentally focuses on the individuals who fought & struggled against colonialism, slavery, and their legacies. The first investigates the different struggles in the gradual labor of breaking down the system of slavery. It looks to the violent resistance that occurred within the Atlantic system, inspiring defiance, and fracturing the machine piecemeal, but also to the literary and political organising in the abolitionary process. The second part deals with very different sorts of struggles: the legacies of slavery and colonialism and how they have been patterned out and resisted up to the present day. It turns again to literary composers, political organisers and to especially resonant symbolic moments, reminding us of the importance of remembering those who have pioneered, resisted, spoken out and paved the way. 

Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise

This series looks at the last five decades of African American history through the eyes of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., exploring the tremendous gains and persistent challenges of these years. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, scholarly analysis and rare archival footage, the series illuminates our recent past, while raising urgent questions about the future of the African American community—and our nation as a whole.
 

In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors

This six-part series introduces students to six of America’s most highly acclaimed contemporary writers: Charles Johnson, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, and August Wilson. With works ranging from plays to poetry to essays, short stories, and novels, the works of these multi-award-winning authors has helped to define the 21st century literary canon. 
 

Black Hollywood the Way It Was

This series looks at the African-American experience in the early days of Hollywood and their achievements and struggles.
 

For Love of Liberty: The Story of America's Black Patriots 

Prevalent and accepted accounts of American history—both scholarly and mainstream sources—portray the face of the U.S. armed services as only white. This series, for the first time, document and acknowledge the sacrifices and accomplishments of African-Americans across four centuries of warfare with a collection of letters, diaries, speeches, and military records read from an all-star cast. 
 

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

This series explores the evolution of the African-American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives they developed -- forging their own history, culture and society against unimaginable odds. Commencing with the origins of slavery in Africa, the series moves through five centuries of remarkable historic events right up to the present -- when America is led by a black president, yet remains a nation deeply divided by race.

By highlighting the tragedies, triumphs and contradictions of the black experience, the series reveals to viewers that the African-American community has never been a uniform entity, and that its members have been actively debating their differences from their first days in this country. Throughout the course of the series, viewers will see that the road to freedom for black people in America has not been linear, but more like the course of a river, full of loops and eddies, slowing, and occasionally reversing the current of progress.

African Americans Who Left their Stamp on History

Thurston Marshall: America's first African American Supreme Court Justice.

Rosa Parks: Civil rights activist.

Langston Hughes: American poet, social activist, playwright, and columnist during the Harlem Renaissance era.