Celebrating One and All

Contains essays, ebooks, and liner notes related to blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel and other forms of Black American music expression.

This collection of films includes cutting-edge racial justice and diversity films that inspire, educate and engage audiences. Additionally, Black Studies in Video features access to the SNCC Legacy Video Collection, a series of formal addresses, panel discussions and programs that took place at a conference and reunion unfolding over four days at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

This original source material--written by African-Americans for African-Americans--contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s.

Non-fiction works by African-American leaders and others who have dealt substantially with issues of race in America. This collection presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts. The ideas of over 1,000 authors present an evolving and complex view of what it is to be black in America.

The Black Film Archive is a living register of Black films. In its current iteration, it showcases Black films made from 1915 to 1979 currently streaming.

The HistoryMakers is a non-profit institution whose purpose is to record, preserve and disseminate the content of video oral history interviews highlighting the accomplishments of individual African Americans and African-American-led groups and movements. It provides a unique scholarly and educational resource for exploring African American history and culture. It is large and has a varied scope, with interviewees from across the United States, from a variety of fields, and with memories stretching from the 1890s to the present.

kweliTV is a streaming platform that celebrates the global Black experience through curated indie films, documentaries, web shows, and more, representing the entire African diaspora (North America, Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Caribbean, and even Australia and some parts of Asia).

Moore became the first practicing African American physician in the city of Durham, North Carolina. He went on to establish the Durham Drug Company and the Durham Colored Library; spearhead and run Lincoln Hospital, the city's first secular, freestanding African American hospital; cofound North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company; help launch Rosenwald schools for African American children statewide; and foster the development of Durham's Hayti community. His legacy can still be seen on the city streets and country backroads today, and an examination of his life provides key insights into the history of Durham, the state, and the nation during Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow Era

Mother & daughter enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history and dreaming of a loving future. When separated, Ady is left hopeless & directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.A novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their freedom.

An adventurous collection that examines how the design field has consistently failed to attract and support Black professionals--and how to create an anti-racist, pro-Black design industry instead. The book examines the intersection of Black identity & practice, probing why the design field has failed to attract Black professionals, how Eurocentric hegemony impacts Black professionals & how Black designers can create an anti-racist design industry.

"This is the first full-length explicitly identified autoethnographic text on African American motherhood. It shows the lived experiences of Black motherhood, when mothering is shaped by race, gender and class, and mothers must navigate not only their own, but also their children's positions in society. Ferdinand takes an intimate look at her mothering strategies spanning ten years (from 2007-2017), preparing her daughter to traverse a racist and sexist society. It is a multi-generational text that blends the author's experience with that of her own mother, grandmother, and her daughter, to engage in a larger discussion of African American/Black mother/womanhood. It is grounded within Black Feminist Theory, which centers the experiences of Black women within the domains of intersecting oppressions..."

"Climate change. Two words that are quickly becoming the clarion call to action in the twenty-first century. It is a voter issue, an economy driver, and a defining dynamic for the foreseeable future. Yet, in Black communities, climate change is seen as less urgent when compared to other pressing issues, including police brutality, gun violence, job security, food insecurity, and the blatant racism faced daily around the country. However, with Black Americans disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change--making up 13 percent of the US population but breathing 40 percent dirtier air and being twice as likely to be hospitalized or die from climate-related health problems than white counterparts--climate change is a central issue of racial justice and affects every aspect of life for Black communities..."

This volume considers how individuals' educational background, their personal experiences, and their relationship with African-American theism have impacted on their efforts to understand and manage the chronic disease of Diabetes, so common among African Americans.

In the pre-antibiotic days when tuber­culosis stirred people's darkest fears, killing one in seven, white nurses at Sea View, New York's largest municipal hospital, began quitting en masse. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the stric­tures of Jim Crow. Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this remarkable true story follows the intrepid young women known by their patients as the "Black Angels." But despite their major role in desegregating the New York City hospital system--and their vital work in helping to find the cure for tuberculo­sis at Sea View--these nurses were completely erased from history. The Black Angels recovers the voices of these extraordinary women and puts them at the center of this riveting story, celebrating their legacy and spirit of survival.

"Using previously unexplored sources, Black Designers in American Fashion addresses the erased histories of black fashion designers and their integral role in the American fashion industry..." " From enslaved 18th-century dressmakers to 20th-century "star" designers, via independent modistes and Seventh Avenue workers, the book traces the changing experiences of Black designers under conditions such as slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. This book fills critical gaps in the history of fashion and offers insights and context to students of fashion, design, and American and African American history and culture."

Book delves into the nuanced character development and narrative themes within the struggles and successes presented in Black films over the last five decades. Author deftly moves from analysing depictions of poverty and triumphs to highlighting the importance of cinema in shaping cultural identity while considering racial prejudice and discrimination.

Examining the work of contemporary Black artists who are dismantling the white gaze and demanding that we see--and see Blackness in particular--anew. In A Black Gaze, Tina Campt examines Black contemporary artists who are shifting the very nature of our interactions with the visual through their creation and curation of a distinctively Black gaze.

From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear.

Photo-llustrated breathtaking essays on a force that fuels Black life all around the globe. The Black Joy Project. International in the scale, fist-raising in the prose, and chockfull of gorgeous works by dozens of acclaimed artists, The Black Joy Project does what no other book has ever done. In words and art, it puts joy on the same track as protest and resistance ... It is a powerful, historically important salve that allows us to keep going and reimagine new ways of being. The Black Joy Project captures these dual realities to incredible, unforgettable effect.

"Explores the construct, culture, and material of the "meme" as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to present day"--

A highly illustrated mini-encyclopedia that demonstrates how much Black inventors and creators have given to modern society.

The relationship between the City of Brotherly Love and its Black residents has been complicated from the city’s founding through the present day. A Black Philadelphia Reader traces this complex history in the words of Black writers who were native to, lived in, or had significant connections to the city.

Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit--the city where he was born, and where one of the country's most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. ...This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making--one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.

Examines how Black women elders have managed stress, emphasizing how self-care practices have been present since at least the mid-nineteenth century, with roots in African traditions.

"This cultural and social history is told through four ordinary families from Brooklyn’s 19th century free Black community: the Crogers, the Hodges, the Wilsons, and the Gloucesters. The book illustrates the depth and scope of their activism, cementing Brooklyn’s place in the history of social justice movements. Their lives offer valuable lessons on freedom, democracy, and family―both the ones we’re born with and the ones we choose....This is a story of land, home, labor, of New Yorkers past, and the legacy they left us."

"Continually Working tells the stories of Black working women who resisted employment inequality in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the 1940s to the 1970s. The book explores the job-related activism of Black Midwestern working women and uncovers the political and intellectual strategies they used to critique and resist employment discrimination, dismantle unjust structures, and transform their lives and the lives of those in their community. Moten emphasizes the ways in which Black women transformed the urban landscape by simultaneously occupying spaces from which they had been historically excluded and creating their own spaces..."

Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Whitehead's kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.

"A leading figure in the movement to decolonize design, Dori Tunstall uses hard-hitting real-life examples and case studies drawn from over fifteen years of working to transform institutions to better reflect the lived experiences of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities."

This book explores and brings a deep understanding of the legacy of racial trauma, and the cultural strengths of African American couples by using real-life case studies...

An assemblage of ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects.

This book helps Black professionals make strategic decisions and learn the unspoken rules for success.Recounting the frustration she felt as a young Black woman beginning her career, these authors know that many Black professionals are relying on their education and intellect alone to be successful in the workplace. In this book, she empowers young Black professionals by equipping them with advice and little-known principles of career success from her experiences and interviews with thirty successful Black leaders.

The first full-length biography of civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis.

Spanning the era from the Great Migration to the Great Recession, this book uncovers the roots of the Black-white wealth gap, the subprime lending crisis, and today's lack of affordable housing in maps created by banks nearly a century ago. Most of all, it offers hope that with the latest scholarly tools we can pinpoint how things went wrong--and what we must do to make them right.

This book "is the first full-length biography of this remarkable country blues performer. Interviewing those who knew White, including his second cousin B.B. King, Johnson has written a detailed and sometimes surprising account of how a young Black man born in the first decade of the twentieth century-the grandson of a slave-found a way to rise above his circumstances and maintain a decades-long career as a musician."

Lucean Arthur Headen (1879-1957) grew up amid former slave artisans. Inspired by his grandfather, a wheelwright, and great-uncle, a toolmaker, he dreamed as a child of becoming an inventor. His ambitions suffered the menace of Jim Crow and the reality of a new inventive landscape in which investment was shifting from lone inventors to the new 'industrial scientists.' But determined and ambitious, Headen left the South, and after toiling for a decade as a Pullman porter, risked everything to pursue his dream. He eventually earned eleven patents, most for innovative engine designs and anti-icing methods for aircraft.

Revealing and panoramic, The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago weaves the fascinating life story of an African American trailblazer through the eventful history of his times.

From the moment of their unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery in early 2018, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama have become two of the most beloved artworks of our time. Kehinde Wiley's portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald's portrait of the former first lady have inspired unprecedented responses from the public, and attendance at the museum has more than doubled as visitors travel from near and far to view these larger-than-life paintings.

Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the existence of health disparities among racial/ethnic groups, the overall outcomes for African Americans are still the most shocking. From high infant mortality to death by almost any cause, African Americans have the worst data of any other racial or ethnic group. Patient-Centered Clinical Care for African Americans, a highly practical and first-of-its-kind title, illuminates these alarming issues and represents a major contribution to the clinical literature. It will be of significant interest to all physicians, clinicians, and allied health personnel.

Upon moving to Detroit, Dr. Altuahene planned to study the city's squatting phenomenon. What she accidentally found was too urgent to ignore. Her neighbors, many of whom had owned their homes for decades, were losing them to property tax foreclosure, leaving once bustling Black neighborhoods blighted with vacant homes.Through years of dogged investigation and research, she uncovered a system of predatory governance, where public officials raise public dollars through laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity--a nationwide practice in no way limited to Detroit.This powerful book shows how predatory governance invites complicity from well-meaning people, eviscerates communities, and widens the racial wealth gap. Using a multi-generational narrative, the book tells a riveting tale about racist policies, how they take root, why they flourish, and who profits."

"Historian Calvin Schermerhorn traces 400 years of Black dispossession and decapitalization—what Frederick Douglass called plunder—through the stories of families who have strived to earn and keep the fruits of their toils. Their struggles reveal that the ever-evolving strategies to strip Black income and wealth have been critical to sustaining a structure of racialized disadvantage. These accounts also tell of the quiet heroism of those who worked to overcome obstacles and defy the plunder."

"This book explores how racial stressors affect all aspects of Black clients' lives and offers powerful ways to support healing. Readers will gain tools for approaching--rather than avoiding--the topic of race in individual therapy and in family, school, and community contexts. The book discusses how to incorporate aspects of racial trauma into assessment and case conceptualization; validate clients' pain as well as their strengths; and adapt evidence-based treatments to overcome cultural gaps..."

About one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter's coming of age in the 1990s in Columbia, South Carolina. "A triumph . . . Redwood Court is storytelling at its best: tender, vivid, and richly complicated."

Design offers so much more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner, a beautification add-on after the heavy lifting. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving—how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. As he does so, he describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity.

An impressive and comprehensive reference work for contemporary scholarship on the cultural histories of Black women across the diaspora spanning different eras from ancient times into the twenty-first century.

Run is the sequel to March, the autobiographical graphic novel trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement told from the perspective of the late US Congressman and Civil Rights leader.

During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles, scrapbookers, and librarians created an enduring set of African diasporic archives. In building these institutions and amassing abundant archival material, they also reshaped Black public culture, animating inquiry into the nature and meaning of Black history. Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of these Black collectors, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south.

The uplifting story of a young Black scientist's challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature's most misunderstood animal-the shark. If navigating the choppy waters of traditional academic study was no longer worth it, then that meant creating an ocean of her own. Jasmin joined with three other Black women to form Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), an organization dedicated to providing support and opportunities for other young women of color. She became an independent researcher- a rogue shark scientist, seeking ways to keep these extraordinary endangered creatures swimming free-just like her.

Ten beautifully illustrated essays tell the stories of handcrafted objects and their makers, providing inspiration and insight into Black history and craftsmanship. Black artisans have long been central to American art and design, creating innovative and highly desired work against immense odds. BLACK CRAFT AND AMERICANA: Delving into the history of Black skilled artisans, estimated to have outnumbered white artisans five to one in the southern United States in the late 1800s, this unique art history book celebrates handcrafted objects that reflect the dynamic nature of Black culture.

Each chapter demonstrate effective examples of social justice design and implementation in LIS to generate meaningful outcomes across local, regional, national, and international settings. Including reflections on challenges and opportunities in academic, public, school, and special libraries, museums, archives, and other information-related settings, the contributions present forward-looking strategies that transcend historical and outdated notions of neutral stance and passive bystanders.

To Build a Black Future examines the spirit and significance of this insurgency, offering a revelatory account of a new political culture--responsive to pain, suffused with joy, and premised on care--emerging from the centuries-long arc of Black rebellion, a tradition that traces back to the Black slave. Drawing on his own experiences as an activist and organizer, Christopher Paul Harris takes readers inside the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) to chart the propulsive trajectory of Black politics and thought from the Middle Passage to the present historical moment.

This short and accessible book is ideal for qualitative researchers, graduate students, and feminist scholars interested in the various dimensions of racialization, coloniality, language, and migration.

"...By jumbling the literary formulas of the detective novel, the heroic folktale, the coming-of-age story, the zombie apocalypse, and the slave narrative, Whitehead reveals the flaws and shortcomings of many of the long-lasting stories through which Americans have defined themselves. Some of the stories Whitehead focuses on are explicitly literary in nature, but he more frequently directs his attention toward the historical and cultural processes that influence how race, class, gender, education, social status, and other categories of identity determine what an individual supposedly can and cannot do."

This remarkable collection drawn from the Schomberg Research materials collects narratives, from firsthand accounts to published speeches to court proceedings, of Black people becoming the agents of their own lives and liberation in the 19th century.

Thia book offers a sweeping history of African American women's political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot and how they fought against both racism and sexism.

Black social media users subvert the digital divide narrative while confronting centuries of erasure, omission, and mischaracterization of Black life in 'mainstream' media. This ethnographic exploration of Black Twitter draws on news media analysis, in-depth interviews, and personal observation to trace the phenomenon's three levels of community connection, and advances a theory of Black Digital Resistance that illustrates how Black social media users harnessed the platform to annotate and narrate everything from play to protest to everyday life.

White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. The author challenges the notion that racism is somehow a paradox or contradiction within the democratic tradition, White Freedom provides vital new perspectives on the inherent racism behind our most cherished beliefs about freedom, liberty, and human rights.

This field of Black girls' and women's health (BGWH) science is both transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary. As such, the contributors to this edited collection offer a unique lens to BGWH science, expanding our collective scientific worldviews. The contributing authors draw upon their ontological and epistemological knowledge to formulate pathways and inform methodologies for doing research and praxis to address BGWH. Each contributor draws upon these knowledges and offers the reader a way to better understand how their framing and writing can create change in the health of Black girls and women.

This collection of essays on Black shame and healing (and contribute their own introductions to the work). Along with the anthology contributors, they create a space to recognize and process the trauma of white supremacy, a space to be vulnerable and affirm the fullness of Black love and Black life.

This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art.

Zora Neale Hurston has long been considered a literary giant of the Harlem Renaissance, but her anthropological and ethnographic endeavors were equally important and impactful. This is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Black women played an active role in the struggle for universal suffrage. They participated in political meetings and organized political societies, as well as attend political conventions at their local churches where they planned strategies to gain the right to vote. In the late 1800s, more Black women worked for churches, newspapers, secondary schools, and colleges, which gave them a larger platform to promote their ideas...Though Black women are less well remembered, they played an important role in getting the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments passed.

A Crime on the Bayou is the story of Gary Duncan, a Black teenager from Plaquemines Parish, a swampy strip of land south of New Orleans. In 1966, Duncan tries to break up an argument between white and Black teenagers outside a newly integrated school. He gently lays his hand on a white boy’s arm. The boy recoils like a snake. That night, police burst into Duncan’s trailer and arrest him for assault on a minor. With the help of Richard Sobol, Duncan bravely stands up to a racist legal system powered by a white supremacist boss to challenge his unfair arrest. Their fight goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Duncan and Sobol’s lifelong friendship is forged.

THE FIVE DEMANDS is a riveting story about the student strike that changed the face of higher education forever. In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, an elite public university located in the heart of Harlem. Fueled by the revolutionary fervor sweeping the nation, the strike soon turned into an uprising, leading to the extended occupation of the campus, classes being canceled, students being arrested, and the resignation of the college president.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition, this beguiling documentary portrait follows poet and activist Nikki Giovanni as she approaches 80. The film explores Giovanni’s Afrofuturist-feminist philosophical outlook as well as her poignant relationship with her family, her political audacity, and her poetic eloquence, all knit together with a constant eye and ear for its subject’s own aesthetic verve. Looking back at a personal life and history cast in the long shadow of American racism, and forward to hopeful, possible futures, Giovanni acts as our guide and narrator, with refreshingly unorthodox filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson refraining from traditional chronologies or talking-head conventions. GOING TO MARS is fueled by constant intellectual engagement and radical imagination in the search for emotional and political fulfillment in a world of disenfranchisement.

Gospel’s hour 1 takes the gospel train North to Chicago, where southern migrants Thomas A. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe blended the melodic sounds and instrumentation of blues and jazz with lyrics about God’s goodness. Like the blues, gospel would become a commodity, but one built by Black-owned publishing companies like Martin and Morris and sustained by Black audiences.

HIGHER POWER details the impact of D.C.'s derailed cannabis legalization on Black communities it was enacted to revitalize. More than 70% of D.C. voters approved cannabis legalization. Still, Congress overturned the law, creating a gray market that continues to criminalize Black residents and deny them access to the economic opportunity of legal cannabis. This film documents, in real-time, the fight to end prohibition and the disenfranchisement of 700,000 U.S. citizens. HIGHER POWER makes clear that the solution for both is D.C. statehood.

The chronicles of Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, and Lewis Latimer, just to name a few of the greatest innovators and inventors of Black history. This is their legacy, their inventions, and their story.

"We are taken from the streets of Weathersby's childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Ave.in Richmond, Va, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, NY. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, city planners doing the same. Book offers a hopeful re-imagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely."

An intimate account of legendary U.S. Representative John Lewis's life, legacy, and more than 60 years of extraordinary activism. After Lewis petitioned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to help integrate a segregated school in his hometown of Troy, Alabama, King sent 'the boy from Troy' a round trip bus ticket to meet with him. From that meeting onward, Lewis became one of King's closest allies. He organized Freedom Rides that left him bloodied or jailed, and stood at the front lines in the historic marches on Washington and Selma.

Malcolm Kenyatta was born, raised, and still lives in North Philadelphia - one of the poorest neighborhoods in America’s poorest big city - where the median income is less than $10,000 per year and gun violence has surged to historic levels. The growing inequities that Malcolm experienced in his neighborhood inspired him to become involved in his community. After spending many years as an activist, Malcolm becomes the first openly gay person of color to win a seat in the PA House of Representatives in 2018. In the years following his victory, he becomes known for his tenacity, energy, and the way he deflects veiled racist attacks from his Republican colleagues. As the 2022 election comes closer, Malcolm decides to run for US Senate, vowing to be a champion for working people: Malcolm’s husband Dr. Matthew Kenyatta, Ph.D. is introspective and thoughtful, and he has never seen himself as a “first gentleman.” In addition to Dr. Matt giving us a unique insight into who Malcolm is, we also follow his personal journey as he navigates life in the public eye as a male spouse to a political figure.

In Look Away, Look Away, director Patrick O'Connor introduces us to an array of activists from both sides of the debate over Confederate symbols, and captures the fierce five-year battle to remove the Mississippi state flag, revealing how race, heritage and long-simmering grievances over the Civil War shapes our sense of who we are as Americans.

In Orangeburg, SC, a battle erupts between the Sons of Confederate Veterans and an ice cream shop owner forced to fly the Confederate flag in his parking lot. This film explores the broader role of Confederate symbolism in the 21st century and the lingering racial oppression which these symbols help maintain.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered today as an American hero: a bridge-builder, a shrewd political tactician, and a moral leader. Yet throughout his history-altering political career, he was often treated by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies like an enemy of the state. This documentary lays out a detailed account of the FBI surveillance that dogged King's activism throughout the '50s and '60s, fueled by the racist and red-baiting paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover. In crafting a rich archival tapestry, featuring some revelatory restored footage of King, Pollard urges us to remember that true American progress is always hard-won.

Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has previously explored in his work. The film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region's natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry.

NO TIME TO WASTE celebrates legendary 98-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin's inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America's story. The film follows her journey as an African American woman presenting her personal story from a kitchen stool in a national park theater to media interviews and international audiences who hang on every word she utters.

The Savoy Ballroom was the home of the amazing Lindy Hop dancers, and the first venue in America where Blacks and Whites could dance and socialize together. Born fatherless and poor, Chick Webb developed spinal tuberculosis and was a hunchbacked dwarf in constant pain, yet he virtually invented modern drumming and built the hottest Swing orchestra of the 1930s - the "house band" of The Savoy Ballroom. Chick was mentored by Duke Ellington, toured with Louis Armstrong, argued with Jelly Roll Morton, jammed with Artie Shaw, discovered and practically adopted Ella Fitzgerald, beat Benny Goodman (with Gene Krupa) and Count Basie (with Billie Holiday) in legendary battle of the bands, befriended Mario Bauzá ("The Father of Afro-Cuban Jazz"), fired R&B pioneer Louis Jordan for trying to steal away Ella, encouraged a struggling Dizzy Gillespie, and helmed the first Black band to host a national radio show . . . all before drumming himself to death at age 30.

Chronicles the lives of courageous Americans fighting for peace, racial equity, environmental justice and indigenous rights through the eyes of Robert Shetterly, a long time activist and artist.

Celebrating the African roots, history, lineage and future progressions of jazz dance through a social and political lens

Led by historical experts and community leaders in the BIPOC surfing movement, WADE IN THE WATER resurrects the thousand-year-old Black surfing tradition, stirring the next generation of Black surfers. The film explores the neglected history of Black surfing’s heritage by charting the origins of African aquatic culture and examining the evolution of Black surfing through the modern day.