First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

A look at the life of Cecil Gaines who served eight presidents as the White House's head butler from 1952 to 1986, and had a unique front-row seat as political and racial history was made.

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

Gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin helps Martin Luther King Jr. and others organize the 1963 March on Washington.

Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, battles through one of his career-defining cases.

In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.

The rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom.

During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America's history lost — until now.

The timely biopic focuses on John Lewis’ longstanding prominence as a civil rights champion and his continuing crusade for racial and social equality. The documentary illuminates the 80-year-old Congressman’s life as it chronicles the moments on the extraordinary journey that have shaped his place in history and make him such a galvanizing figure today as protests circle the globe. Lewis’ schedule has increased ten-fold as he has become the go-to figure for TV news shows, podcasts and newspapers and magazines from the Washington Post to Vanity Fair, commenting on and leading the way forward through today’s worldwide protests and demonstrations.

This film, which includes archival footage and interviews with convicted killerJames Earl Ray, Martin Luther King III and former police officers, looks back at Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968 and lingering conspiracy theories.

Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the United States.

In 1936, Victor H. Green (1892-1960) published The Negro Motorist Green Book, a book that was both a travel guide and a survival manual, to help African-Americans navigate safe those regions of the United States where segregation and Jim Crow laws were disgracefully applied.

Writer, journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer John Meacham offers his timely and invaluable insights into the country’s current political and historical moment by examining its past. Based on his 2018 bestseller of the same name.

This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was just a matter of time before his enemies closed in. Despite death threats and intimidation, Malcolm marched on - continuing to spread the word of equality and brotherhood right up until the moment of his brutal and untimely assassination. Highlighted by newsreel footage and interviews, this is the story of the last twenty-four hours of Malcolm X. Featuring the music of jazz percussionist Max Roach.

A housewife sits on the stoop of her apartment building in a black neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and discusses all manner of things with her neighbors.

Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.

Set in the turbulent 1680s, this four-part drama takes place on both sides of the Atlantic, as these two young men and two young women commit their lives to a fairer future with blood, passion and urgency. New Worlds is a gripping story of love and loss and the human price paid for the freedoms we enjoy today.

Tiny House Nation takes renovation experts John Weisbarth and Zack Griffinh across America to help design and construct tiny dream homes in spaces under 500 square feet. Tiny House Nation proves size doesn't matter it's creative that counts!

Based on his book, American writer Stewart Brand takes a look at the life history of buildings - how they're shaped by their architects, and how they're further shaped by their inhabitants.

The story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., stretching from his days as a Southern Baptist minister in the South of the 1950s until his assassination in Memphis in 1968.

From Banger Films, the people that brought you the Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage documentary and the TV show Metal Evolution, comes an all-new docu-series profiling the biggest icons in hard rock, heavy metal and classic rock. Rock Icons takes you backstage with in-depth, intimate portraits revealing who these rock stars really are. Each 30-minute episode is jam-packed with exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage with featured artists and the key people who helped shape their careers.

From The Creators Of The Best-Selling Documentary Series "Up From Slavery"... A 7-Part Compelling Journey Through America's Greatest Saga. In 1860, the nation founded upon an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness had as many as four hundred thousand slave-owners and almost four million slaves. By denying these rights to more than twelve percent of its population, America would soon pay with the blood of a generation. The story of African Slavery in America started with the first permanent English Colony in the 17th century... and ended with the Civil War. But those two hundred and fifty years of struggle were just the beginning. The beginning of a journey down the long Emancipation Road...

Explore Ali’s challenges, confrontations, comebacks and triumphs through recordings of his own voice. The two-part documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who was a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world and, in his later years, was recognized as a global citizen and a symbol of humanity and understanding.

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

A television miniseries based on the life of Harriet Tubman, the escaped African American slave who helped to organize the Underground Railroad, and who led dozens of African Americans from enslavement in the Southern United States to freedom in the Northern states and Canada.

A half-hour docuseries takes a peek into the mind of interior designers, revealing their creative processes and introducing the inspirations and influences that shape their designs.

Caroline Randall Williams, an award-winning writer, cookbook author and restaurateur, travels the United States uncovering the fascinating, essential and often untold black stories behind American food.

For over two decades, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin gave everything to wrestling, becoming one of the all-time greats. However, his dedication to his career meant sacrificing many of the other experiences life has to offer. In “Stone Cold Takes on America,” Austin hits the road in his RV, accepting challenges from fans that push him out of his comfort zone, and make up for lost time. Through archival footage from classic WWE moments and his own stories, the series weaves together Austin’s old and new life—both filled with incredible feats and his unique point of view—as he celebrates and learns from new experiences how only “Stone Cold” Steve Austin can.

Of Black America was a series of seven one-hour documentaries presented by CBS News in the summer of 1968, at the end of the Civil Rights Movement and during a time of racial unrest (Martin Luther King had been assassinated that spring and riots in many cities had followed). The groundbreaking[1] series explored various aspects of the history and current state of African-American community.