Enslaved African Americans longed for freedom, and that longing took many forms including music. Drawing on biblical imagery, slave songs both expressed the sorrow of life in bondage and offered a rallying cry for the spirit. Like a Bird brings together text, music, and illustrations by Coretta Scott King Award-winning illustrator Michele Wood to convey the rich meaning behind thirteen of these powerful songs.

First published in 1867, Slave Songs of the United States represents the work of its three editors, all of whom collected and annotated these songs while working in the Sea Islands of South Carolina during the Civil War, and also of other collectors who transcribed songs sung by former slaves in other parts of the country. The transcriptions are preceded by an introduction written by William Francis Allen, the chief editor of the collection, who provides...

"The song "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" is personified, describing the Black history and culture that inspired its creation. Written in 1968 by singer James Brown after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the song became an anthem for the civil rights movement"--

The entire field of American folk poetry covering more than one hundred songs, including both words and music, is represented in this collection.

In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary, part music film, part historical record, created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was largely forgotten,...

A collection of jazz short films.

Anthems, or songs of hope and praise, can help support communities through difficult times. Throughout the 1900s, the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" evolved into an anthem for black people in the United States. The Story of the Black National Anthem explores the history and the legacy of this uplifting song.

On August 20, 1972, more than 100,000 people attended what came to be known as 'the black Woodstock.' Wattstax documents this historic event and includes the once-lost original ending.

"A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"-how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonin DvorÌk prophesied a "great and noble" school of American classical music based on the searing "negro melodies" he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would found popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold...

The album tells an Afrofuturist story set in a far-future world devastated by climate change. Jake Blount and his collaborators embody a group of Black climate refugees as they perform a religious service, invoking spirituals that are age-old even now, familiar in their content but extraordinary in their presentation. These songs, which have seen Black Americans through countless struggles, bind this future community together and their shared past;...