Richard Allen

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

"The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. It is also the only of Douglass' autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American Presidents such as Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield."--Publisher....

The story behind the unlikely friendship which developed between the accused rapist Ronald Cotton--who served eleven years in prison for a crime he didn't commit--and his accuser, Jennifer Thompson, raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept.

Focusing on the final scene of Ibsen's A doll's house, which is presented by the same actors and production team in three different sets and costumes, this program examines how the gender issues raised by the play can be interpreted in different ways.

Known only as the "Ex-Colored Man," the protagonist in Johnson's novel is forced to choose between celebrating his African American heritage or "passing" as an average white man in a post-Reconstruction America that is rapidly changing. Narrated by a man whose light skin enables him to "pass" for white, describes a journey through the strata of Black society-- from a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from genteel...

The story of the Funk Brothers, the group of musicians that played on every single hit Motown record from the label's beginnings to 1972.

Ben Dibbuk has a good job, an accomplished wife, a bright college-age daughter, and a patient young mistress. Even as he goes through the motions of everyday life, however, inside he feels nothing. The explanation for this emotional void lies in the years he spent as a blacked-out drunk before pulling his life together--years in which he knows he committed acts he doesn't remember. Then a woman from his past turns up at a gala for his wife's new gig...