BLACK HISTORY

August Wilson (1945 - 2005) was an award-winning American playwright whose work illuminated the joys and struggles of the African-American experience in the United States during the 20th century. August Wilson's Childhood Wilson’s rise from humble beginnings to Broadway was unlikely. Born Frederick August Kittel ...

On the occasion of Maya Angelou's memorial, the makers of American Masters: Maya Angelou (w.t.) share one of their favorite poems by Angelou, “Still I Rise.”

At the time of Maya Angelou’s death, she was participating in the first feature documentary about her life for the American Masters series, Maya Angelou: The People’s Poet. Co-directors/producers Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack last interviewed Dr. Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, ...

The environmental justice movement came from communities that historically bore the brunt of hosting waste sites in their backyards. When a predominantly black county in North Carolina protested a toxic waste landfill, it galvanized the nation to talk about environmental racism. This video with archival ...

In honor of Black History Month, American Masters looks at a selection of its archive to highlight artists and advocates who shaped America's culture, changed the course of history, and took a stand in the Civil Rights Movement to create a lawful and just society ...

Alice Walker's great-great-great-great-grandmother was a slave who journeyed on foot with two babies on her hips, from Virginia to Eatonton, Georgia, which is considered Walker's ancestral home. In memory of that walk, Walker chose to keep and embrace her maiden name, Walker.

Zora Neale Hurston's embrace of black culture and language was an inspiration to Alice Walker. "I realized that unless I came out with everything I had supporting her, there was every chance that she would slip back into obscurity," Walker says of the Harlem Renaissance ...

In this archival footage, Alice Walker reads from what she calls "the God section" of her novel "The Color Purple." She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel. The text is from a letter the novel's protagonist, Celie, writes to her sister ...

An early history and musical biography of the great Jimi Hendrix.

Biographical Timeline of James Baldwin