Black History Month Resources: Black History Streaming Media Selections

The Black Atlantic explores the truly global experiences that created the African American people. Beginning a full century before the first documented slaves arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, the episode portrays the earliest Africans, both slave and free, who arrived on the North American shores. Soon afterwards, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade would become a vast empire connecting three continents.

A favorite of the film festival circuit, The Aggressives is an insightful look at the little explored, yet highly dramatic subculture of lesbian butches as well as their "femme" counterparts who toe the line between gender definitions. This fascinating documentary features intimate and revealing interviews with six aggressives.

Against a backdrop of sex, politics, and race, Anita reveals the intimate story of a woman who spoke truth to power. An entire country watched as a poised, beautiful African-American woman sat before a Senate committee of 14 white men and with a clear, unwavering voice recounted the repeated acts of sexual harassment she had endured while working with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill's graphic testimony was a turning point for gender equality in the U.S. and ignited a political firestorm about sexual harassment and power in the workplace that resonates still today.

Bell Hooks is one of America's most accessible public intellectuals. In this two-part video, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, she makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism.

15 videos in this collection

The final film by filmmaker Marlon Riggs, BLACK IS...BLACK AIN'T, jumps into the middle of explosive debates over Black identity. White Americans have always stereotyped African Americans. But the rigid definitions of "Blackness" that African Americans impose on each other, Riggs claims, have also been devastating. Is there an essential Black identity? Is there a litmus test defining the real Black man and true Black woman?

In the turbulent 1960s, change was coming to America and the fault lines could no longer be ignored -- cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding, and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. A new revolutionary culture was emerging and it sought to drastically transform the system. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would, for a short time, put itself at the vanguard of that change.

In this documentary, Marlon Riggs - Emmy winning producer of ETHNIC NOTIONS - carries his landmark studies of prejudice into the Television Age. COLOR ADJUSTMENT traces 40 years of race relations through the lens of prime time entertainment, scrutinizing television's racial myths and stereotypes.

Past and present collide in this powerful documentary about Faubourg Treme, the fabled New Orleans' neighborhood that gave birth to jazz, launched America's first black daily newspaper, and nurtured generations of African American activists.

A fascinating chronicle of hip-hop, urban fashion, and the hustle that brought oversized pants and graffiti-drenched jackets from Orchard Street to high fashion's catwalks and Middle America shopping malls. Director Sacha Jenkins' music-drenched history draws from a rich mix of archival materials and in-depth interviews with rappers, designers, and other industry insiders.

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes provides a riveting examination of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, long-time hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a "loving critique" of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorising destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood.

An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.

An Oscar-nominated portrait of an African-American family that dramatically captures their successes and failures as they struggle to overcome the devastating effects of poverty, welfare, and community violence.

For four generations, the Collins family has depended on welfare and lived in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, one of the most dangerous housing projects in America. Through the powerful voices of three generations of African-American women, LEGACY tells the story of a mother, two daughters, and a grand daughter who are struggling to break free from poverty, welfare, drug addiction and the violence in their community.

Little White Lie tells Lacey Schwartz's story of growing up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity -- despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin.

My Brooklyn is a documentary about Director Kelly Anderson's personal journey, as a Brooklyn "gentrifier," to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class. The story begins when Anderson moves to Brooklyn in 1988, lured by cheap rents and bohemian culture.

This New York Times Critics' Pick, filmed with verite intimacy for nearly a decade, is a moving portrait of the Rainey family living in North Philadelphia. Beginning at the dawn of the Obama presidency, Christopher "Quest" Rainey, and his wife, Christine'a "Ma Quest" raise a family while nurturing a community of hip hop artists in their home music studio. It's a safe space where all are welcome, but this creative sanctuary can't always shield them from the strife that grips their neighborhood.

Slavery by Another Name, narrated by Laurence Fishburne, is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South after the Civil War, new systems of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force and brutality.

The first documentary to explore the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY probes the recesses of American history by discovering images that have been suppressed, forgotten and lost.

Directed by Nina Rosenblum and narrated by Danny Glover, this segment salutes the black cowboys of the western wilderness who fought alongside their Native American and white counterparts during the development of the frontier.

Cheryl Dunye plays a version of herself in this witty, nimble landmark of New Queer Cinema. This beautiful high definition, digital restoration was created from the original film negatives for the landmark film's 20th anniversary.

Black colleges and universities are a haven for Black intellectuals, artists and revolutionaries and have educated the architects of freedom movements and cultivated leaders in every field. TELL THEM WE ARE RISING: THE STORY OF BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES examines the impact these institutions have had on American history, culture, and national identity.

A valuable and colorful examination of 40 years of changing representations of Black masculinity in a significant area of popular culture -- comic books.