Movies: Mahalia Jackson

During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 y...

In 1940s New York, a white widow who dreams of being on Broadway has a chance encounter with a black single mother, who becomes her maid....

Gavin MacLeod and Marion Ross host a Christmas celebration that features classic performances of popular holiday standards and traditional carols performed, throughout decades past, by an array of artists, including Andy Williams, Bing Crosby, Perry ...

Constructed from a wealth of archival footage, the documentary follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1955 to 1968, in his rise from regional activist to world-renowned leader of the Civil Rights movement. Rare footage of King's speeches, protests,...

The other party is in disarray. Five men vie for the party nomination for president. No one has a majority as the first ballot closes and the front-runners begin to decide how badly they want the job....

On September 15, 1963, a bomb destroyed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls who were there for Sunday school. It was a crime that shocked the nation--and a defining moment in the history of the civil-rights movement. Spike...

Set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, this documentary mixes images of water and the town with performers and audience. The film progresses from day to night and from improvisational music to Gospel. It's a concert film that suggests peace and leisu...

Documenting Louis Armstrong's appearance at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival....

Will Handy grows up in Memphis with his preacher father and his Aunt Hagar. His father intends for him to use his musical gifts only in church, but he can't stay away from the music of the streets and workers. After he writes a theme song for a local...

The Harlem Cultural Festival, also known as "Black Woodstock", was a series of music concerts held in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City during the summer of 1969 to celebrate African American music and culture and to promote the continued politics of ...

Raymond Anthony Myles was the electrifying Gospel Genius of New Orleans. Like a comet shooting across the sky, he was here one minute – brilliant, incandescent and unmistakably unique. And then, just as quickly, he was gone… But Raymond was more than...

Mahalia Jackson was the greatest gospel singer in the world. Shortly before her death in 1972, she embarked on a triumphant European tour, and this film is a record of that tour, and a portrait of a gifted artist and a warm, sincere woman....

Documentary narrated by Paul Winfield, this documentary follows the course of Mahalia Jackson's extraordinary life - from her humble beginnings as a sickly child singing in New Orleans churches to her breakthrough with Columbia Records and her ascend...

Aretha Franklin's recording career is examined through archival footage and interviews with family and prominent figures within the music industry....