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The sixth episode of Prison Chronicles, titled “San Quentin,” takes viewers inside San Quentin State Prison, California’s oldest, dating back to the Gold Rush. The episode explores three inmates’ escape attempts: George Jackson, Stanley “Tookie” Williams, and Forrest Silva Tucker. George Jackson’s escape attempt involved a gun hidden in an afro wig. Stanley “Tookie” Williams, […]

Prison Chronicles: San Quentin...

The Attica Prison riot, immortalized by Al Pacino’s rebellious refrain in Sidney Lumet’s “Dog Day Afternoon,” became a rallying cry against overzealous policing. Yet with the death of each participant, the exact events at Attica, the largest prison rebellion in US history, have begun to fade in the unforgiving ether of time. In “Attica,” co-directors Stanley Nelson (“The Murder Of Emmett Till”) and Traci A. Curry interview the remaining survivors: the former inmates and the family of the now-deceased prison guards to recall an incident during which self-respect was demanded but tragedy soon followed.

The uprising occurred September 9, 1971 on the grounds of the inhuman prison practices used by prison officials. 1,200 inmates took over the prison, taking 42 people hostage. The conflict lasted for five days, resulting in 29 inmates and 10 hostages dead. It led to murder, created villains and heroes, and uncovered the inequities that existed between races then, and still,...

1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything highlights the almost psychic rapport between radicals and radical thinking musicians. One activist brought together the Queen of Soul and the top royalty of British Rock. The documentary points out how Aretha Franklin offered to post bail for Angela Davis, but the former philosophy professor also drew in support from The Rolling Stones, former Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and by extension, Bob Dylan.

Angela Davis was born to encourage free thought. The neighborhood where she grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, was called “Dynamite Hill,” because the Ku Klux Klan tried to bomb middle-class Blacks out of the area. Cops broke up interracial study groups Angela organized in high school, and she knew some of the young girls killed in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham. She spoke French, graduated Brandeis and traveled to Europe before she became a UCLA philosophy instructor. She joined the Black Panthers,...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Forty years after the high-stakes trial that catapulted 26-year-old scholar and Marxist feminist Angela Davis into the spotlight as a revolutionary icon, Shola Lynch’s 2012 documentary, “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” relives those transformative years of Davis’ life. It’s quite a journey: Even as she was branded a terrorist, Davis spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom. The portrait of that story reignites discussion on the radical movement she joined and eventually led, and it still holds the power to inspire a new generation to similar acts of collective progressivism, all in the name of political and social reforms.

“Terrorist” is far from the only label Davis has faced over the years: activist, intellectual, inspiration, and fearless leader all...

Anthony Hamilton tries to rekindle a failed romance — over a flip of Rick James and Teena Marie’s classic ballad “Fire and Desire” — in the misty-eyed “Back Together.”

Hamilton has long possessed one of R&b’s great voices; some days, it seems like he’s the last vestige of a vital southern soul tradition that persisted from Otis Redding through Jodeci but now seems nearly extinct. Hamilton’s power is on full display in “Back Together,” especially during the chorus, which is grainy and graceful and pleading in all the right ways.

Bob Dylan made some pretty significant changes to his live show earlier this month when he added drummer Matt Chamberlain and guitarist Bob Britt into to the mix. Gone from the band is drummer George Recile, who played continuously for Dylan (onstage and in the studio) since he joined in 2001. No drummer in history has played even close to that many shows with Dylan. Chamberlain — best known for his work with Tori Amos, Pearl Jam, and the Saturday Night Live band — has never played with Dylan before, but Britt did...

At the dawn of the Black Hollywood Renaissance of the '90s, the sodality of filmmakers like Spike Lee, F. Gary Gray, The Hudlin Brothers, Bill Duke, Stan Lathan, John Singleton, The Hughes Brothers, George Jackson, Doug McHenry, Mario Van Peebles, Robert Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Kevin Hooks, Fred "Fab Five Freddy" Braithwaite, Charles Stone III, Nelson George and this writer, to name a few, felt like the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. We - like Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt at the height of their artistic revolt in the U.K. during the late 1800s - were cinematic reformers, rejecting the cartoonish mythos of African American life, as depicted in the Black...