Black History Month will come alive for your listeners with compelling offerings that chronicle the African American experience — from L.A. Theatre Works.

A Raisin in the Sun – One of the great seminal works of American theatre, Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking play chronicles the Younger family on the south side of Chicago. Her compelling portrait of competing dreams earned Hansberry the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play at the age of 29. She became the youngest playwright and the first African-American to win that honor.
Starring Judyann Elder, Corey Hawkins, Deidire Henry, and Rutina Wesley (Tara in HBO’s True Blood).
Available: PRX, FTP (email for info)
Cost: PRX 590 points FTP – $60
Length: 01:57:58 (Can be played as two one-hour programs)

Unquestioned Integrity: The Hill-Thomas Hearings 20th Anniversary Special – (One-hour)”A national disgrace…a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves” as described by Clarence Thomas, or a public referendum on sexual harassment and other gender inequities in late twentieth-century America? Compiled from the official transcripts of the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings.
Starring Edward Asner, Ella Joyce, and Paul Winfield
Available: PRX, FTP (email for info)
Cost: FREE
Length: 59:00

Also Available:

A Huey P. Newton Story – In this Obie Award-winning show by Roger Guenveur Smith, the life of the controversial Black Panther leader is brilliantly imagined through a series of improvisations based on Newton’s own words and writings.
Written, performed, and directed by Roger Guenveur Smith.
Available: PRX, FTP (email for info)
Cost: FREE
Length: 01:57:54 (Can be played as two one-hour programs)

Ruby McCollum – In 1952, in a small town in Florida, a wealthy African-American woman named Ruby McCollum shot and killed a respected white physician, ostensibly over a bill. Her true motives came to light during her murder trial, which made national headlines. The story is a true-life case, and the stuff of a Southern Gothic novel, complete with interracial romance, drug abuse, mental illness, and the racist attitudes of the Jim Crow South. Starring Paul Winfield and Loretta Devine
Available: PRX, FTP (email for info)
Cost: FREE
Length: 01:57:58 (Can be played as two one-hour programs)

Action Speaks: What’s Race Got to Do With It? - Action Speaks, from WRNI, looks at contemporary issues through the lens of history, using under-appreciated 20th-century dates that have changed America. Host Marc Joel Levitt and guest panelists discuss the 2000 Census where, for the first time, individuals could identify themselves as mixed-race citizens of the United States, blurring “traditional” racial and demographic lines in the U.S. and the world.
COST: FREE;  LENGTH: 58:50;  AVAILABLE: CD, PRX,CONTENT DEPOT

Elizabeth and Roger Wilkins: On Hope and Obama
Civil rights pioneer Roger Wilkins is joined by his daughter Elizabeth to discuss their reactions to Obama’s election.
Roger, 76, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and teacher.  Elizabeth was field manager for the Obama campaign in Michigan. They’re interviewed by host Mike Cuthbert. From AARP’s Prime Time Radio series.
AVAILABLE: CD, Content Depot, mp3 downloads, and Podcast; LENGTH: 59:00; COST: FREE

What’s the Word? Black History Month Specials

Texts of Resistance
How did slaves resist their oppression? Three works explore what it means to resist and to survive.
* John Bugg talks about an eighteenth-century slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah     Equiano;
* Russ Castronovo tells us about Frederick Douglass’s novella, The Heroic Slave;
* Natasha Barnes discusses the novel The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
AVAILABLE on CD, PRX, and CONTENT DEPOT; LENGTH: 29:00;  COST: FREE

W. E. B. Du Bois
Considered by many the most important African American leader of the early twentieth century, sociologist, historian, author, teacher, and activist W. E. B. Du Bois had a profound effect on the way we talk about race.
* David Levering Lewis speaks about Du Bois’s early life and the years that led up to the publication of his groundbreaking The Souls of Black Folk;
* Marlon B. Ross explores the historical events that shaped Du Bois’s book and shares memorable passages;
* Cheryl Townsend Gilkes discusses the book’s continuing influence.
AVAILABLE on CD, PRX, and CONTENT DEPOT; LENGTH: 29:00;  COST: FREE