Films for Black History Month

For Black History Month, the Ithaca College Library features a sampling of documentary, biographical, and feature films related to the history of the African Americans from slavery to beyond the civil rights movement.

From Slavery  through Jim Crow
Slavery and the making of America
Africans in America: America’s journey through slavery
Roots of resistance: a story of the underground railroad
Homecoming: sometimes I am haunted by memories of red dirt and clay
Rise and fall of Jim Crow [DVD on order]
Swingin’ uptown: Renaissance in Harlem
Order of myths [story of segregated Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama]
Third Ward TX [story of a black neighborhood in Houston]
Night Tulsa burned [the race riot of May 31, 1921]
Amos ’n Andy: anatomy of a controversy

Civil Rights Movement, 1950-1970
Eyes on the prize
Freedom on my mind [story of the Mississippi Voter Registration Project of the early 1960’s]
February One [story of the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, NC]
With all deliberate speed: the legacy of Brown v. Board
4 little girls
At the river [story of the sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]
1968 : the year that shaped a generation
We shall overcome [the story of the song]

Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King, Jr. from Montgomery to Memphis
King: a filmed record
Citizen King
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: a historical perspective
Speeches of Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King, Jr: a personal portrait.

Other Biographies
Looking for Langston: a meditation on Langston Hughes and the Harlem Ranaissance
Ida B. Wells: a passion for justice
Malcolm X
Brother outsider: the life of Bayard Rustin
Road to Brown the untold story of the man who killed Jim Crow [Charles Hamilton Houston, Dean of Howard University Law School]
Home of the brave [story of activist, Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered in 1965 in Selma, Alabama]
Journeys in black: Louis Farrakahn
Soul of justice: Thelton Henderson’s American journey
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr
Passin’ it on [story of Black Panther leader Dhoruba Bin Wahad]
Toni Morrison
Negroes with guns [story of militant Robert F. Williams]
August Wilson
Ralph Ellison: an American journey
Richard Wright -- Black boy

More recent Race and Politics
Color of your skin [Frontline story on race relations in the army]
Street fight [2002 race for Mayor of Newark]
Jena 6
Hands that picked cotton: black politics in today’s rural south
America beyond the color line
America in black & white [about prom night in Georgia]

These are only a few of hundreds of dramatic films in the Ithaca College Library multimedia collection that might be appropriate for Black History Month viewing:

• Raisin in the sun
• Court-martial of Jackie Robinson
• Imitation of life [1934 and 1959 releases]
• Mississippi masala
• Roots
• Antwone Fisher
• Girl in room 20; Son of Ingagi ; The girl from Chicago ; Lying lips [4 all-black cast films from the 1940s].
• Stormy weather
• Carmen Jones
• Daughters of the dust
• Separate but equal
• Glory
• Malcolm X
• Brother from another planet

In honor of Black History Month, PBS is offering FREE streaming, full-length PBS videos which include archives and and interviews with civil rights pioneers, and others that examine current issues facing African Americans.

Try doing an advanced search and try searching (dvd video?) [any of these] as a Keyword

AND

any of the following terms as your second Keyword (to name a few):

• african american
• africa
• slavery
• civil rights
• segregation
• race relations

Missing from these lists of films are biopics on entertainers and sports figures and blaxploitation films or films about the history and culture of Africa. Be advised that there are many examples of those films in the Ithaca College Library as well.

Thanks to Jennifer Strickland, Fine Arts Librarian, Kelly Merritt, Multi-Media Services Manager, and Andrew Darby, Web Services Librarian, for their assistance in the compilation of this guide.