Browse - Most popular shows featuring: african american history^x

When legendary African-American entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C.J. Walker, aka Sarah Breedlove, rises up from the ashes of slavery to become a black hair care pioneer and mogul, she becomes America's first African-American, female self-made millionaire.

Limited series focusing on Mamie Till Mobley, who spent her entire life seeking justice for her son Emmett Till after being brutally murdered in the Jim Crow South.

The 1619 Project seeks to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the national narrative.

The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the most watched miniseries in U.S. history.

This series follows Aminata's journey from her childhood home in West Africa to a South Carolina indigo plantation to Canvas Town, an early Black settlement in lower Manhattan. Aminata draws upon her intelligence and strength of character to help find a way home and reunite with her long-lost daughter.

Decades after the assassination of African American leader Malcolm X, an activist embarks on a complex mission seeking truth in the name of justice.

The People V. The Klan is a four-part docuseries about the little-known true story of Beulah Mae Donald, a Black mother in Alabama, who took down the Ku Klux Klan after the brutal murder and lynching of her son, Michael. He was just nineteen years old and found dead, hanging from a tree in Mobile, on March 21, 1981. Black community leaders immediately suspected it was a Klan lynching, but local law enforcement was slow to acknowledge that the murder was racially motivated. When the investigation stalled, Beulah Mae and local Black leaders refused to back down until Michael's killers and the hateful organization they belonged to received justice. The series explores the systems that allowed the Klan to operate unfettered for so long and the Civil Rights movement activists who dismantled the Klan's hold on the nation. Beulah Mae Donald ultimately brought a massive lawsuit against the United Klans of America and successfully brought the hate group to its financial knees. Through interviews with key figures in the Donald story, the Civil Rights movement, and the modern movement for racial justice, the series confronts the past's inextricable link to the present-day discord in America. The series shines a light on the too-often marginalized agents of change in our society: The Black mothers of the movement, alongside the activists and attorneys who fight for racial equality in America.

Let The World See is a fresh and deep examination of Ms. Mamie Till-Mobley's fight to bring her son's body home to Chicago and her pivotal yet heartbreaking decision to have an open-casket funeral for the public to see, which ultimately served as a turning point for the civil rights movement. The docuseries also traces Ms. Mamie Till-Mobley's journey back to the Jim Crow South to face her son's murderers in court. The program will illustrate how the Till family has continued her legacy since her death in 2003, remaining active in the movement as the deaths of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Ms. Breonna Taylor and others sparked protests around the country. 

"James Brown: Say It Loud" traces the incredible trajectory of Brown's life and career from a 7th grade drop-out arrested and jailed at the age of 16 for breaking into a car in the Jim Crow-era South, to an entertainment legend whose groundbreaking talent and unique perspective catapulted him to become a cultural force.

Continuing the story of Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors, this award-winning sequel to Roots picks up the story at the conclusion of the Civil War, and covers the significant historic events that impacted Haley and his family, from Reconstruction and Jim Crow, through World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The epic account concludes during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s when the author himself tracks down and eventually meets his distant kin in Gambia, West Africa while preparing to write what would become his ground-breaking novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning 14-hour television series produced by Blackside and narrated by Julian Bond. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, the series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985. Series topics range from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act in 1965; from community power in schools to "Black Power" in the streets; from early acts of individual courage through to the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions. When Eyes on the Prize premiered in 1987, The Los Angeles Times called it "an exhaustive documentary that shouldn't be missed." The series went on to win six Emmys and numerous other awards, including an Academy Award nomination, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the top duPont-Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism.

A four-part series hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that chronicles the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people-beyond the reach of the "White gaze." Professor Gates sits with noted scholars, politicians, cultural leaders, and old friends to discuss this world behind the color line and what it looks like today.