A look at the confluence of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and blacklists with the post-war activism by African Americans seeking more and better roles on radio, television, and stage. It begins in Harlem, measures the impact of Paul Robeson and the campaign to bring him down, looks at the role of...
For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose...
Biography of Norman Corwin, the great writer, producer and director of the Golden Age of Radio. Actors in his radio plays included Orson Welles, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Laughton, Danny Kaye, Paul Robeson and Judy Garland.
This documentary is a compilation of silent black-and-white film footage shot by the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after the atomic bomb blasts in early August 1945. English-language voice-over narration has been added, along with a few scenes from American sources. The film shows the...
Human torture. Factories of death. War atrocities. The crimes that haunt the pagse of history are chronicled in the piercing documentary Camps of Death. Following Hitler's murderous career, the film traces his rise to power, his ultimate demise, and the subsequent nuremberg trials that publicized...
Reconstructs the case of United States vs. Darby Lumber Company, which, in 1941, resolved long struggles over the question of whether Congress had the right to set minimum wages, limit child labor, and in other respects legislate employment standards.
Shows the relationship of the Constitution to the issue of prior restraint on freedom of expression. Presents the case of Burstyn v. Wilson challenging the constitutionality of New York State's film censorship system and Cantwell v. Connecticut involving questions of freedom of speech and religion....
Shows the relationship of the Constitution to organized labor. Presents the case of Whitaker et al. v. North Carolina, in which a group of unions challenged the constitutionality of a state ban on the closed shop, the union shop, and other union security provisions. Traces the role of the...
Follows the efforts to gain the right to vote for Negroes through a succession of legal decision and social changes. Dramatizes the case of Smith vs. Allwright et al. Reviews the long conflict to extend voting rights to a large electorate beginning with the Constitutional Convention's compromise...
