Free At Last (1965)

Episode from National Educational Television's The History of the Negro People hosted by Ossie Davis. Featuring Roscoe Lee Browne as WEB Dubois
In this program dramatic readings trace the history of the American Negro from emancipation to the end of World War II. The words are those of four major Negro figures - Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey. The cast features Ossie Davis, Frederick O'Neal, Hugh Hurd, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Leonard Jackson. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and leading abolitionist, saw the years immediately following the Civil War when Negroes and whites went to school together, rode on street cars together, when Negro senators and representatives sat in Congress. By 1877 when President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Douglass as Marshal of the District of Columbia, Jim Crow had reared his head. Douglass reflected: "I am an outcast from the society of my childhood and an outlaw in the land of my birth."?x0BBooker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute and an advisor to presidents, called for conciliation, for patience and hard work on part of the Negro.?x0BLater William DuBois, Harvard educated and a founder of the NAACP, spoke for another course: ... "Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys."?x0BAt the close of World War I, Marcus Garvey urged another course to some 25 thousand followers at a Madison Square Garden rally in New York. His message was a simple one for Negroes: Back to Africa. At the height of his career, Garvey claimed 4 million followers.?x0BThe depression came, and the so-called Negro Renaissance of the twenties died. "The Negro," it was said, "was the last hired and the first fired." When World War II came, the Negro went off to fight for democracy. He came home to a land "for whites only." "At the end of this era, 1945, there were some changes, but mostly it was the same old story," narrator Ossie Davis concludes. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)The little known and long ignored heritage and history of the Negro people is explored in an unprecedented television effort. To prepare this series of nine half-hour episodes, N.E.T.'s cameras traveled throughout the United States, to Africa, and to Latin America. Hosted and narrated by Broadway actor Ossie Davis, History of the Negro People also calls upon the talents of novelists John A. Williams, Cyprian Ekwensi, Jorge Amado, and Chinua Achebe; Basil Davidson, noted British writer and historian on Africa; actors Frederick O'Neal, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Hugh Hurd; John Henry Clark, writer and teacher; historian Gilberto Freyre, actress Ruby Dee; the choral group "The Voices Inc.," and a number of other personalities. The episodes vary in format, with dramatic, documentary, and discussion techniques employed according to the subject and content of each half-hour. The final episode is extended to 75 minutes. In addition to being host on the series, Mr. Davis has written the script for episode 3, Slavery, a dramatic and choral work adapted from the testimony of former slaves. He appears in the episode with his wife, actress Ruby Dee, and the choral group The Voices, Inc. History of the Negro People is a 1965 production of National Educational Television. The 9 episodes that comprise this series were originally recorded in black and white on videotape.
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