Down in the Delta

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." A 7 day vlog during the summer of 2023, a story of dreamers and drowners.

A jukebox operator helps promote a calypso craze.

Long-running anthology program sponsored by Hallmark Cards. Beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2019, the series received 80 Emmy Awards, 24 Christopher Awards, 11 Peabody Awards, 9 Golden Globes, and 4 Humanitas Prizes. Early seasons were a weekly live drama, eventually transitioning to videotaped and then filmed productions broadcast as occasional specials.

In-depth interviews with hard-hitting questions and sensitive topics being covered as famous personalities from all walks of life talk about the highs and lows in their lives.

CBS News looks at Malcolm X, focusing on his public life from 1959 to his assassination in 1965, suggesting that his death was a great loss to the nation. The film intercuts archival footage of Malcolm and interviews with family, friends, colleagues, scholars, and writers. CBS documents Malcolm's move from being Elijah Muhammad's deputy in the Nation of Islam to his embrace of Islam: his new links with the civil rights movement posed a real threat to the powers that be. CBS details his death after secret FBI acts to increase the rift between Muhammad and Malcolm. Maya Angelou, Dick Gregory, and Andrew Young offer trenchant comments. "He was our manhood," eulogized Ossie Davis.

Integration Report 1, Madeline Anderson's trailblazing debut, was the first known documentary by an African American female director. With tenacity, empathy and skill, Anderson assembles a vital record of desegregation efforts around the country in 1959 and 1960, featuring footage by documentary legends Albert Maysles and Richard Leacock and early Black cameraman Robert Puello, singing by Maya Angelou, and narration by playwright Loften Mitchell. Anderson fleetly moves from sit-ins in Montgomery, Alabama to a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C. to a protest of the unprosecuted death in police custody of an unarmed Black man in Brooklyn, capturing the incredible reach and scope of the civil rights movement, and working with this diverse of footage, as she would later say, “like an artist with a palette using different colors.”

Heated confrontations and revelations result when a divorcee returns with her young son to the home of her two sisters.

The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the most watched miniseries in U.S. history.

At the birth of two boys, one white and one black, a mysterious and powerful Conjure Woman (Maya Angelou) prophesies that they will start the change. Growing up as best friends in rural Georgia in the 1940s, the boys make a discovery that leads the town's new sheriff, Frank Richards (Dean Cain), to reopen the investigation of the unsolved murders of three black men. While the town would prefer that the truth remain hidden, the sheriff pursues the case, determined to see justice prevail. The Runaway is a stirring story of how friendship, determination and conviction can generate racial change in one heart or an entire town.

Monica, an angel, is tasked with bringing guidance and messages from God to various people who are at a crossroads in their lives.

Richard Pryor wanders around the NBC Studio, encountering various eccentrics. Meanwhile, the Reverend James L. White, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada and others are taping their own segments.

The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and 7, respectively. Their family includes a mother, a frequently absent father, an older brother, and younger triplets. We witness the horrors of growing up in an ill-maintained housing project tyrannized by drug gangs and where murders and shootings frequently occur.

The everyday life of Moesha Mitchell, a vivacious young woman juggling romance, school, ever-changing family dynamics, and friendships.

Still grieving after the murder of her boyfriend, hairdresser Justice writes poetry to deal with the pain of her loss. Unable to get to Oakland to attend a convention because of her broken-down car, Justice gets a lift with her friend, Iesha, and Iesha's postal worker boyfriend, Chicago. Along for the ride is Chicago's co-worker, Lucky, to whom Justice grows close after some initial problems. But is she ready to open her heart again?

Made especially for the HBO cable network, this well-wrought feature is comprised of three short stories by three noted black American authors, each of which is directed by a respected black director.

Soon-to-be-wed graduate student Finn Dodd develops cold feet when she suspects her fiancé is cheating on her. In order to clear her head, Finn visits her grandmother, Hy, and great aunt, Glady Joe Cleary, in Grasse, Calif. There, Finn learns that Hy and Glady Joe are members of a group of passionate quilters, and over the course of her visit she is regaled with tales of love and life by women who have collected rich experiences and much wisdom.