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Black History Month TV Schedule
February 5
7pm ET/PT
Black Preachers
Over the course of American history, black preachers have united their people, incited them, and propelled them forward. Above all, they’ve raised up their voices and lifted their hopes and dreams. This one-hour documentary examines the influence of these men of the cloth and how their roles have changed over two centuries. Part spiritual advisors and part community activists, America’s black preachers represent a rich chorus of voices at the heart and soul of the black experience. Their mission is complex and sometimes contradictory—to battle oppression while preserving peace, to destroy prejudice while celebrating race, and to uphold tradition while fomenting change.
BLACK PREACHERS looks at the efforts of slave preacher John Jasper, the social and economic justice preached by Father Devine, Fred Shuttlesworth and Jesse Jackson, and the multi-million dollar messages now marketed in mega-churches run by the likes of Eddie Long.
It features interviews with prominent black ministers including Jesse Jackson, Fred Shuttlesworth, Eddie Long, and Calvin Butts, as well as reenactments of famous preachers and their sermons.
February 12
7pm ET/PT
Conspiracy?: Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?
On April 4, 1968, a sniper gunned down Martin Luther King Jr. as he stood on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. Charges of cover-ups and government complicity were heard almost immediately--suspicions that haven't waned with time. Several versions have passed for the "truth" of King's assassination--from the "official" story in '68 with small-time criminal James Earl Ray as lone assassin; Ray's later assertion that he was framed by "Raul", the true killer; to the '78 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) report that claimed Ray acted on behalf of a conspiracy. And there's a theory that federal government agencies were out to get King--and they had greater motivation to do so than James Earl Ray. We revisit the murder--one of the least explicable of the assassinations that rocked the '60s.
8pm ET/PT
Save Our History: Voices of Civil Rights
SAVE OUR HISTORY: VOICES OF CIVIL RIGHTS is a program about one of the defining moments in America’s history – the Civil Rights Movement – told through the small, powerful, personal stories of men, women and children who lived through it. In this SAVE OUR HISTORY special, ordinary people with extraordinary stories share their memories of the civil rights era: how they first discovered that they were treated differently because of their color, their first small acts of defiance, why some moved from quiet anger to public action, the triumphs, regrets, stands taken and sacrifices made in the process.
AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Library of Congress co-sponsored a nationwide bus tour of 35 cities around the country in 2004, to collect firsthand accounts of the Civil Rights Movement. The tour was part of the Voices of Civil Rights project, a multifaceted effort to build the world's largest archive of civil rights stories for placement in the Library of Congress. Journalists, photographers, and volunteers were on board to help collect visitors' stories. The History Channel recorded several hundred interviews with these eyewitnesses to history.
February 15
10 pm ET/PT
Modern Marvels: George Washington Carver Tech
George Washington Carver was a visionary who shared his knowledge with the world free of charge. At the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he invented more than three hundred uses for the peanut, including synthetic marble, shoe polish, peanut soap, butter, shaving cream, and soil conditioner. He built his laboratory from scratch, and became one of the most respected and honored men in the world. Men like the Prince of Wales and Joseph Stalin consulted him on their agricultural problems, and Thomas Edison offered him a hefty salary to come and work with him. GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER TECH looks at contemporary applications of Carver’s ideas – from soy plastics to peanut butter, soy inks to bio-diesel fuel.