Black History Month

This program examines the life of author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The film follows Hurston, best known for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, to the subtropical paradise that shaped her childhood and her life’s work - where she returned again and again for inspiration and solace. This documentary tells her story through the people who knew her and the places and events that she brought to the world through her writing.

Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads where the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Decisions will need to be made on how to best spend the money, from buying a new family home, buying a liquor store or even paying for medical school tuition. While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.

10 episodes tracing the history of jazz from its roots in the African-American community of New Orleans to its heights and continuing presence.

Born Malcolm Little, his minister father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. He became a gangster, and while in jail discovered the Nation of Islam writings of Elijah Muhammad. After getting out of jail, he preaches the teachings, but later on goes on a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. There he converts to the original Islamic religion and becomes a Sunni Muslim. He changes his name to El-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz and stops his anti-white teachings, having discovered the error of his mistakes. He is later assasinated and dies a Muslim martyr.

Explore with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 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.