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Freedom Song

5/25/2013

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This made-for-TV movie focuses on the grassroots efforts of a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to combat the entrenched racism of the segregated South. The film focuses on Owen Walker (Vicellus Reon Shannon), a youth who longs to address the injustices of his hometown in rural Mississippi. His father Will (Danny Glover) forswore his own previous attempts to organize local blacks. Owen resents his father, until he too realizes the true cost of protesting.

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Boycott

5/25/2013

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Black Americans boycott the public buses during the 1950s civil rights movement.

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Slavery by Another Name

5/19/2013

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    Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of
Americans' most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country
ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel
slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of
masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into
the 20th century.

    For most Americans this is entirely new history. Slavery by Another Name gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features their descendants living today.
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Freedom Writers

5/19/2013

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    A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply
themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
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Chicano! PBS Documentary- Taking Back the Schools

5/19/2013

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    Full-length documentary about the Chicano student movement in East L.A. in 1968
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Freedom Riders

5/19/2013

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    The story of the Civil Rights Movement interstate busing protest campaign.
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Walkout

5/19/2013

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    Walkout is the true story of a little-known but profoundly significant moment in the history of the Latino community in East Los Angeles.
In 1968, Lincoln High School honor student Paula Crisostomo (Alexa Vega), outraged at the shabby treatment afforded Chicano students in the L.A. school system -- including habitually lowered expectations, poor facilities, a total absence of bilingual courses or textbooks, unfairly administered penalties for
slight infractions, demeaning corporal punishment, and out-of-hand refusal to
write letters of recommendation to choice colleges -- challenges the authority of her elders for the first time in her life by organizing a mass student walkout at five barrio high schools. Mentored by dedicated young teacher Sal Castro (Michael Pena), Paula and her fellow student activists intend to make their protest a peaceful one, but the L.A. cops typically use brute force to quell the "radicals." Even when it seems that the school board will capitulate to the Chicano students' demands, the kids are betrayed (there's an undercover police officer in their midst) and the leaders of the walkout are threatened with lengthy prison sentences on trumped-up "conspiracy" charges. It will not spoil the ending of the film to reveal that the students are ultimately
successful; as directed by actor Edward James Olmos (who also plays one of the school board members), the dramatic thrust of the story is the lasting effect
that the protest has on its participants -- especially the idealistic Paula
Crisostomo. Executive producer Moctesuma Esparza, who'd been one of the original walkout organizers back in 1968, spent a full two decades getting this story on film; Esparza is played by Bodie Olmos, son of the director, while Esparza's daughter Tonantzin Esparza is seen as Vickie Castro. Also, Paula Crisostomo's daughter Marisol Crisostomo-Romo is seen as Mita -- and in addition, several of  the former student activists are interviewed during the closing credits, or  appear as extras in the crowd scenes.

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American Violet

5/11/2013

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    A single African-American mother struggles to clear her name after being wrongly accused and arrested for dealing drugs in an impoverished town in Texas.
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