When Washington Post journalist Lonnae O'Neal Parker wrote her controversial article "White Girl?" she struck a nerve-and opened a dialogue-with readers on both coasts. In this program, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel and correspondent John Donvan explore what it means to be black in America, assisted by Ms. Parker, her biracial cousin Kim McClaren, and Peggy Sakagawa, Caucasian wife of an Asian-American man. Lonnae's message? Being black today is still...

Traces the history of black America back to ancient African civilization, examining attempts by the white establishment in the U.S. to conceal this knowledge as a means of undermining African American identity. Presents theories of scholars and social commentators which comprise a history in which African Americans have been systematically oppressed as a people.

Examines the issue of color consciousness within the black community. This film explores a caste system based on how closely skin color, hair texture and facial features conform to a European ideal. A variety of African Americans give their experiences and attitudes towards the question of color.

Continues the history of people of African descent, including topics such as the global African presence, the science of melanin, the truth about the prison industrial complex, how thriving black economic communities were undermined in America, hidden truths about Native Americans, and more.

Discussed is the broad spectrum of race relations in the 1990s. To what extent should African-Americans strive to maintain their cultural heritage and to what degree should they seek to become assimilated into American society today?

"Marcus Mosiah Garvey, b. Jamaica 1887, d. 1940, organized the black nationalist movement of the 1920's in the United States. Garvey went to New York City in 1916 and recruited followers for his Universal Negro Improvement Assosiation. Its program was to unite all black peoples through the establishment in Africa of a country and government of their own. garvey was a magnetic speaker and led his followers in parades through Harlem. In 1921 he claimed...

Four prominent African-American writers each narrate a period in the life of the sociologist and author W.E.B. Du Bois, and describe his impact on their work. They chronicle Du Bois' role as a founder of the NAACP, organizer of the first Pan-African Congress, editor of Crisis, a journal of the black cultural renaissance, and author of a series of landmark sociological studies. Anathematized during the McCarthy years, Du Bois immigrated to Ghana,...