Streaming Video Available to NIU Students, Faculty, & Staff
Booker's place a Mississippi story (2012)In 1965, filmmaker Frank De Felitta filmed a documentary focused on changing times in the American South, particularly the tension-fraught Mississippi Delta. The film was broadcast on NBC News in May of 1966 and outraged many Southern viewers, in part because it included an extraordinary scene featuring a local African American waiter named Booker Wright. Wright, who worked at a local 'whites only' restaurant in Greenwood, Mississippi, went on record to deliver a stunning, heartfelt, inflammatory monologue about the realities of racism in the community. The fallout for Booker Wright was extreme. He lost his job. He was beaten and ostracized by those who considered him 'a traitor.' Booker's Place, his place of business, was torched. Forty-five years after Booker's television appearance, Frank De Felitta's son, director Raymond De Felitta, journeyed into the Mississippi Delta with Wright's granddaughter to learn more about who Wright was, the mystery surrounding his courageous life and untimely death, and the impact of the NBC News documentary.
Color of Justice (2011)This film explores judicial decisions that have shaped America's racial attitudes ... the Dred Scott case, Plessy vs. Ferguson, the 1970 court order to integrate the schools of Lamar, South Carolina. It also reviews the efforts of modern political and judicial leaders to help break the color line ... at Little Rock, Arkansas, at the University of Mississippi, in the nations's schools, voting booths, courtrooms, and public accommodations.
Do The Right Thing (1989)Directed by Spike Lee. Racial tensions grow in a Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the summer.
Melvin and Jean an American story (2012)The documentary follows Melvin and Jean McNair from revolt and exile to renewal and reconciliation. As a young couple in 1972, the McNairs made news when they hijacked a plane from Detroit to Algeria to join the international section of the Black Panthers. Simultaneously an act of political resistance to racism and the Vietnam War and an act of desperation committed by two young people who saw no other way to escape the constant state of racial oppression in the US, the controversial act continues to have long-term repercussions decades later. After serving several years in prison in France for the hijacking, the McNairs remained in France and, for 35 years, have lived as model citizens in their adopted country. Forty years after the fact, the two are still coming to terms with their crime and its lifelong consequences as they try to gain the freedom to return home without spending the rest of their lives behind bars in America.
On stage, chicago students tackle immigration, poverty, race (2012)"Students at the Albany Park Theatre Project in Chicago research, write, and perform plays about their own communities, tackling tough issues like immigration, poverty, and race while learning about theater in an area where extracurricular activities are few and far between. NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown reports."
DVDs available for Check-Out from NIU Libraries
Birth of a movement : the battle against America's first blockbuster"In 1915, African American newspaper editor and civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter waged a battle against D.W. Griffith's notoriously Ku Klux Klan-friendly blockbuster The Birth of a Nation, which unleashed a fight still raging today about race relations and representation, and the power and influence of Hollywood. Birth of a Movement features commentary from Spike Lee, Reginald Hudlin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and DJ Spooky (who created a new score and remix of the Griffith film), and numerous clips from the technically groundbreaking but racially astounding epic"
Call Number: DVD. E656 .B578 2017
ISBN: 9781531701444
Publication Date: 2017
The Central Park fiveChronicles America's complicated perceptions of race and crime through the story of the "Central Park 5"--A group of minority teenagers wrongfully convicted and jailed for brutally raping a white woman in New York.
Call Number: DVD. HV6568.N5 C457 2013
ISBN: 1608838544
Publication Date: 2013
I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin; Raoul PeckNational Bestseller Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary To compose his stunning documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin's published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck's film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin's private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America. This edition contains more than 40 black-and-white images from the film.
Call Number: DVD. E185.61 .I366 2017
ISBN: 9780525434696
Publication Date: 2017-02-07
White like me"Based on the work of Tim Wise, the film explores race and racism in the United States through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today."
Call Number: DVD. E185.615 .W56 2013
ISBN: 9781932869804
Publication Date: 2013
Films to Rent / Available through Streaming Subscriptions
"Director Ava DuVernay argues that mass incarceration, Jim Crow and slavery are 'the three major racialized systems of control adopted in the United States to date.'" Available through Netflix or free on YouTube through the month of June.
"In this two-part series, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. chronicles the last 50 years of black history through a personal lens. Released days after the 2016 election, some themes of the documentary took on a deeper meaning amid Donald Trump's win." Available free from PBS.
"Narrated by the words of James Baldwin with the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro connects the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter."
The film Just Mercy, based on the life of civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, is available to be streamed on many services for free in the month of June.
"LA 92 is about the Los Angeles riots that occurred in response to the police beating of Rodney King. The film is entirely comprised of archival footage." Available on Netflix.
Teach Us All explains why that is — school choice, residential segregation, biased admissions processes — and talks to advocates working for change. Available on Netlix.
"The 2014 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Mo. was one of the deaths that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Frustrated by media coverage of unrest in Ferguson, co-directors Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis documented how locals felt about police in riot gear filling their neighborhoods with tear gas." Available through Hulu.
In her PDF 2016 talk, Safiya Noble-- Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA--explains why we should care about commercial spaces dominating our information landscape
From The New York Times. "Hosted by recent Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 audio series chronicles how black people have been central to building American democracy, music, wealth and more."
From The Atlantic. "An audio documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Floodlines is told from the perspective of four New Orleanians still living with the consequences of governmental neglect."
From The African American Policy Forum. "Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a leading critical race theorist who coined the term "intersectionality," this podcast brings the academic term to life. Each episode brings together lively political organizers, journalists and writers."
From NPR. "To understand the history of systemic racism in America, listen to episodes: "American Police," "Mass Incarceration" and "Milliken v. Bradley."
From NPR, this episode of Throughline focuses on origins of American policing and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.
Reni Eddo-Lodge, author of "Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race" talks about global discussions on racism following the death of George Floyd with The Observer’s Nosheen Iqbal.