Between Civil War and Civil Rights

Series produced by Alan Lipke

Caption: PRX default Series image
PRX default Series image 

A rich, oral-based cultural history, documenting and debating U.S. race relations from Emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement, and exploring how that history continues to effect us.
With numerous eyewitness accounts, rare period music recordings, and narrative contributions by James Earl Jones and Studs Terkel.

The series currently has 5 full-hour documentaries; an optional half-hour documentary; and a one-hour "conversation-starter" about the press and race. It can be broadcast in hour-length programs, or as (approximately) 10-13 half-hours. It can also be broken down into numerous short tracks for drop-ins to magazine shows and talk shows.
These programs have been distributed by PRI, and excerpted by Pacifica and adapted on NPR's flagship magazine shows. Awards received include the New York Festivals' Grand Award, the RTNDA/Unity Award, an RTNDA Murrow, and NCLB awards.
Between Civil War and Civil Rights is a work-in-progress; we invite producers and stations to join us in developing additional segments for the remaining documentaries, and in producing public discussion forums and conversation-starter programs.


6 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: An American Terrorist
From the founding of the Ku Klux Klan by ex-Confederate officers, through the defeat of Reconstruction: How history is made and remade, with histor...

Bought by WCPN, WRPI, and KUNM


  • Added: May 05, 2009
  • Length: 58:19
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Wilmington's black newspaper--after the "riot" and coup
In 1898, White Supremacist Democrats in North Carolina overthrew Wilmington's integrated administration. The plotters killed dozens of African Amer...

Bought by WCPN and KUNM


  • Added: May 05, 2009
  • Length: 59:25
  • Purchases: 2
Piece image
An exploration of American racism as cultural and commercial mass-phenomenon, covering the "reincarnation" of the Klan as a fraternal movement whic...

Bought by WCPN


  • Added: May 05, 2009
  • Length: 57:56
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Rosewood survivor Minnie Lee Langley
It began on New Years Day 1923, when a white woman in a small Florida (saw-)milltown claimed that a black man had attacked her. By the week's end, ...

Bought by WCPN


  • Added: May 05, 2009
  • Length: 59:31
  • Purchases: 1
Piece image
Mob madness leads to a pivotal feminist protest during the dark days of Jim Crow racism.

Bought by KGNU Community Radio, KUER, WCPN, KFAI Minneapolis, WMNF and more


  • Added: Feb 07, 2008
  • Length: 29:30
  • Purchases: 6
Caption: Paul Robeson testifies
Equality under the law became viable for African Americans only after hard, dangerous work turned public opinion and federal policy against the whi...

Bought by WCPN and KSJD


  • Added: May 05, 2009
  • Length: 58:51
  • Purchases: 2