African American Studies
Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of New Orleans
DVD, 68 min., 2007
This part of New Orleans, near the French Quarter, is considered to be the oldest African American neighborhood in the United Statese as well as the birthplace of the black civil rights struggle and the home of jazz. From slavery to the racial inequalities still evident today, this film is a tribute to the various achievements of this determined community.
The Language You Cry In
DVD, 52 min., 1998
This is an amazing story of memory -- how the memory of a family was pieced together through a song with legendary powers to connect those who sang it with their roots. People brought to the Southeast from Sierra Leone over 200 years ago as slaves preserved the song, although the meaning of the words was forgotten until a linguist in the 1930s recognized the origin. In the 1990s scholars discovered that the song was still remembered in Sierra Leone.
Tulia, Texas
DVD, 58 min., 2008
This is a film about a sting conducted under the banner of the "War on Drugs" in a Texas panhandle town that brings into focus the issues of how race and poverty are addresses in the criminal justice system.
Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968
DVD, 57 min., 2009
In 1968, two years before four white students were slain at Kent State University, three black students were killed in South Carolina when more that 500 law enforcement officers cordoned off the campuses of south Carolina State College and Clafin University, two black schools in Orangeburg, after police and demonstrators clashed at a segregated bowling alley.
Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun
DVD, 84 min., 2008
This film tells about the life of a one-of-a-kind novelist and anthropologist who grew up in an all-black town in Florida and later wrote books and plays about African American culture and experiences in the South in the first half of the 20th century.