Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads , is a monumentally successful video achievement. With eyewitness accounts, archival film footage, government documents, and
excellent retrospect interviewing, Eyes on the Prize II chronicles the African-American's human rights struggle in the United States from 1965 to 1985. This struggle, referred to as "the movement," is examined through eight individual episodes of approximately one hour each.
Each episode critically examines a combination of topic, issue, individual, or organization, and the effect each element had on the momentum and direction of the civil rights movement. These programs not only seize the opportunity to explore many of the movement's traditional aspects
(marches, boycotts, voting, organized protests, etc.), they take reportage two steps further. The aggressive coverage of events rarely discussed makes this series a truly meritorious accomplishment.
Part 2: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985
Episode 9 - Power! (1967-1968) Shows blacks taking control of their communities using ballot boxes, streets and schools as dominant platforms. Carl Stokes is elected the first black mayor of a major city and the Black Panther Party is formed in Oakland.
Episode 10 - The Promised Land (1967-1968) Examines the movement's increasing concern with economic issues. In the midst of organizing a Poor People's Campaign march in Washington D.C., Dr. King is called away to help striking workers in Tennessee. On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated.
Episode 11 - Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More (1964-1972) Looks at the refusal of blacks to continue to conform to traditional stereotypes. A new generation begins to define itself, led by a greater sense of pride and awareness of its roots, culture and values.
Episode 12 - A Nation of Law? (1968-1971) Uncovers the levels of police harassment and brutality targeted at young black activists. At the same time inmates at New York's Attica prison organize a takeover in an effort to publicize intolerable conditions. For many, Attica becomes symbolic of prison conditions nationally.
Episode 13 - The Keys to the Kingdom (1974-1980) Chronicles the relationship between the law and popular struggles, and the efforts to inject substance into promises of equality. The movement's focus is on the keys to the kingdom: jobs and education.
Episode 14 - Back to the Movement (1979 To Mid-1980's) Concludes the series with an examination of the social and political changes that occurred in two cities - one Southern, one Northern - more than a decade after the civil rights movement.
Please note Episode 7 & 8 are no longer available.
This movie starts with the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and ends in the mid-1980's. It is really detailed and in depth. It starts the Civil Rights Movement at B.M. (Before Martain Luther King Jr.) and continues through his life and work, into the mid-1980's.
I think that if you are an educator, parent, or just like history you will love this video.
If you are an African-American parent, teacher, etc. and want to give your children, students, etc. a sense of history (their history) then this would be a great gift. In today's society when we take things like voting or simply the place where we sit on the bus for granted, we can look back and really appreciate what the leaders of the Civil Rights Movements have done for us.
I think that this video shows that the struggles that African-American's went through to gain the simpliest freedoms show that one month just isn't enough. That Black History should be taught all year around.
This video chronicles the life and times of the noted African-American historian, scholar and Pan-African activist John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998). Both a biography of Clarke himself and an overview of 5,000 years of African history, the film offers a provocative look at the past through the eyes of a leading proponent of an Afrocentric view of history. From ancient Egypt and Africa’s other great empires, Clarke moves through Mediterranean borrowings, the Atlantic slave trade, European colonization, the development of the Pan-African movement, and present-day African-American history.
Biography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues
Actors: Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Minor Watson, Louise Beavers, Richard Lane
Directors: Alfred E. Green
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
The life and career of Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis, who held the title for 12 years--longer than any other boxer in history--and who had to not only battle opponents inside the ring and racism outside it.
Actors: Coley Wallace, Hilda Simms, Paul Stewart, James Edwards, John Marley
Life and Debt is a just-completed feature-length documentary which addresses the impact of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and current globalization policies on a developing country such as Jamaica.
This methodically rabble-rousing film can be read two ways: face-on as a laser-sighted exposé of Jamaica's economic strangulation by an IMF hell-bent on fomenting chaos and dependency in the name of slave-wage sweatshops and the almighty Mickey Dee's, or, from a slightly more askew angle, as the grimmest Black science-fiction movie of all time. A tale of one very small Black planet's near hopeless struggle against a technologically superior alien adversary more malevolent than anybody's Borg.
We learn of Jamaican farmers, food producers, and policy makers coerced by the IMF to dismantle their own prodigious food industries so that subsidized foreign competitors can crush them in the local market.
We're reminded of the Clinton-led suit against Jamaica's banana industry on behalf of Chiquita and Dole, which ensured that those brand names now controlling 95 percent of the world's banana trade can scarf up JA's minuscule portion too.
We hear of offshore poultry wholesalers who demand the return of their impounded caches of 20-year-old chicken, blithely claiming their poison meat was really intended for Haiti.
The film also gives an inhuman face to the IMF in the form of the devil incarnate, deputy director Stanley Fischer, who plays the smug villain with mustache-twirling relish.
The director confesses that "the film is supposed to make you mad," and hopes that editing it in her bedroom aided in transferring her sense of mission to the viewer.
By 1921, Tulsa was booming thanks to the discovery of oil, and many African Americans had also prospered. Most black people lived in the racially segregated "Greenwood" section of the city, which contained stores, shops, hotels, banks, newspapers, schools, theaters, and restaurants. Greenwood had several wealthy black entrepreneurs and was sometimes called the "Black Wall Street" of America. By 1921, membership in the Ku Klux Klan was rapidly spreading throughout America and an active chapter had been formed in Tulsa. The riot was triggered over a Memorial Day weekend by a report in two white newspapers that a black youth had tried to rape -- or at least assault -- a young white woman elevator operator. One of the newspapers allegedly editorialized that the youth ought to be hanged. Rumors raced through the black community that a lynch mob was planning to hang the youth. A group of armed African-American men rushed to the police station with the intention of preventing a lynching from occurring.There was no lynch mob but a confrontation developed between blacks and whites; shots were fired and some whites were killed. As the news spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of whites rampaged through the black community, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes.Some blacks claimed that policemen had joined the mob; others claimed that a machine gun was fired into the black community and a plane dropped sticks of dynamite. When the National Guard arrived, it arrested blacks rather than white rioters. Some four thousand to five thousand men and women were held in custody for several days before being released. No whites were arrested even though many of the mob members openly boasted of what they did. Thirty-five blocks of Greenwood were burned to the ground, wiping out businesses and homes. Reports of the number of blacks killed ranged from 25 to 300. Approximately 20 whites were killed.
