African American Studies

The struggles of the African American people for their own emancipation, from the very early years of their presence in the New World, have been an inspiration and a beacon casting a spotlight on wider battles for democracy and social change. This includes the struggle for the transition to a new socialist order, as well as the major structural reforms won along the way. No revolution in this country is possible without a deep understanding of this legacy and its full potential for the future.

African American Freedom Struggle

19 Video Lectures in 18 hours by Claybourne Carson of Stanford University Access Here

Black Reconstruction in the South

A one-hour lecture with David Blight, Yale University

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Malcolm X: The Ballot or the Bullet

One-Hour Video of the 1964 Detroit Lecture Access Here

Angela Davis Interviewed by Julian Bond

Two-Hour Session on Explorations in Black Leadership

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Slavery in the Making of America

Four film episodes, each about an hour long, tells the story of slavery in the U.S. from 1619 to the defeat of Reconstruction

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Black Poet/Blues People: Amiri Baraka from Jazz to Hip-Hop

Several hours of poetry and music featuring Amiri Baraka, author of 'Blues People'

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Inventing the White Race
A 90-minute video lecture at the Brecht Forum by Jeffrey B. Perry reviewing the new 2nd edition of Ted Allen's classic work: “When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.” --Theodore W. Allen (Written after searching through 885 county-years of Virginia’s colonial records) The Invention of the White Race (Verso), with its focus on racial oppression and social control, is one of the twentieth-century’s major contributions to historical understanding of white supremacy and the system of white-skin privileges reinforcing it. Access Here

King: A Rare Filmed Record. Democracy Now spends an hour featuring an historic look at the movement that led up to that March on Washington. The one-hour video airs major excerpts of the rarely seen 1970 documentary King: A Filmed Record...From Montgomery to Memphis. The film was directed by Sidney Lumet and produced by Ely Landau, largely made from original newsreel footage. The film was played at a one-time-only event March 24th, 1970, in theaters across the country. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and is listed in the National Film Registry. But ever since 1970, the documentary has been rarely seen—until now, as the distributors of the film have given us permission to share it with you. The film has just been released as a two-DVD set by Kino Lorber. It begins December 1955 with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a full church in Montgomery, Alabama. It was just days after Rosa Parks was arrested. The African community—the African-American community in Montgomery had gathered to decide whether to begin what became the famous Montgomery bus boycott. Access Here