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Media Lending Library

Humanities Tennessee has created a Media Lending Library of award-winning video documentaries dealing with a broad range of topics on Southern history and culture. Videos are available free of charge to any non-profit, school, or community group in Tennessee. Click on the title for additional information or to request the film.

All Day & All Night

Through interviews with legendary Blues musicians, this documentary short explores the historic role of Beale Street as a social and entertainment hub for rural African-Americans of the mid-south, as an environment in which young musicians apprenticed, and as a catalyst for taking the popularity of Blues musicians beyond the neighborhood.

At the River I Stand

A compelling chronicle of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, this program focuses on the details that took the strike from a struggle for labor rights to a battle for human rights, and the impact of the strike in the context of the larger Civil Rights movement.

Big Jim Folsom: The Two Faces of Populism

This program follows the political career of Jim Folsom, populist governor of Alabama for two nonconsecutive terms in the forties and fifties. Folsom took politics to the rural poor, fought segregation, and supported public works projects, thoroughly embarrassing and enraging the power structure in the process.

Black Diamonds, Blues City

For over half a century, organized baseball denied African Americans a chance to earn a living playing the game.  In response, The Negro Leagues were created. These Negro League teams were very important community institutions, and nowhere were this more true than in the segregated South and in the city of Memphis. Black Diamonds, Blues City tells the story of The Negro Leagues and especially The Memphis Red Sox.

Blood Memory: the Legend of Beanie Short

Beanie Short deserted the Confederate Army during the Civil War and became an outlaw in the Turkey Neck Bend area of the upper Cumberland River. This documentary follows folklorist Lynwood Montrell as he rediscovers how the Short legend survives in the Turkey Neck Bend community today, and how oral traditions play a role in broader cultural transmission.

Dawn's Early Light: Ralph McGill & the Segregated South

This program examines the career of the Atlanta newspaper publisher and columnist whose moderate racial dispositions publicly challenged the bigotry of regional politicians in the 1950s and 60s. Archival footage is juxtaposed with more contemporary scenes of integrated living.

Dorothea Lange, A Visual Life

The focus of this documentary is Lange's photography of the American South and other subjects. The narration of Lange's insightful comments explores the role of her photos in social reform, and the nature and consequences of the medium for documenting the human condition.

Freedom on My Mind

This award-winning study examines the dramatic events in Mississippi surrounding the Freedom Summer. Archival footage and interviews with local sharecroppers and young organizers who participated culminate in the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and describe how these events helped shape a radical generation of black and white youth. 1994 Academy Award nominee for "Best Feature Documentary."

Gandy Dancers: Last of Southern Black Railroad Crews

This program documents the occupational folklore of the crews that repaired and straightened rail lines for southern railroads. Enlivened by demonstrations from retired crewmembers, this program explores the relationship among task related work chants, synchronized actions, and the psychology of difficult physical labor.

George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire

This two-part documentary follows the highly contentious political career of Alabama's George Wallace across several decades. The program provides a thorough and in depth examination of the successful political strategies he employed to successfully reinvent himself over a turbulent and divisive period in national politics.

God's Will

Narrated by Ossie Davis this film explores the life, character and commitments of the backwoods Baptist preacher Will Campbell. A Yale-educated, white intellectual, Campbell is known for having sheltered nine black children from the Little Rock mob. He was also the only white person at the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACLU.

Hoxie: The First Stand

Told through the experiences of former Hoxie students, teachers and towns people, the documentary tells the story of one small town's unheralded impact on the Civil Rights movement.

Long Shadows

This program explores the legacy of the Civil War upon the United States' society, economy and national psyche. Highlights include issues of imperialism, regional prejudices, economic reprisals, and the impact of Civil War strategies upon subsequent US warfare.

M & M Smith: For Posterity's Sake

Rich in photographs, film clips, and reminiscences, this program highlights the Smith brothers' experience in the mass migration of African-Americans from the South to Harlem.

Music Masters and Rhythm Kings

An old time string band from North Carolina, an Alabama Blues man, and a Miami Afro-Cuban ensemble go on tour together, each demonstrating the vitality, diversity and historical roots of these Southern music traditions.

O Freedom after While

In 1939, 1,500 sharecroppers sought economic justice through a prolonged demonstration along the roadsides of the Missouri bootheel through the dead of winter. A short time later, many of these sharecroppers became triumphant homeowners. This film chronicles the circumstances of this remarkable episode fueled by class conflict, racism, and the vying of state and national interests.

Partners of the Heart

This program documents the amazing medical discoveries of and the unique relationship between Vivien Thomas, a high school educated black man, and Dr. Alfred Blalock, a highly educated white surgeon. Through their medical discoveries during the mid-century thousands of children born with a deadly heart defect — known as "blue babies" — were given a second chance at life.

Raise the Dead

This documentary explores the traveling tent ministry of H. Richard Hall, the "long-haired preacher" who has brought Holiness-Pentecostal revivals to Appalachia since his Depression-era childhood.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: the Travels of Gatemouth Moore

Award-winning look at the career and times of Gatemouth Moore, the legendary Delta blues man who rejected his celebrity to become a preacher when he decided the Blues were beyond the pale of Christianity.

Southern Stews: A Taste of the South

Chronicles the intimate role that food plays in not only helping Southerners retain their connections to the past, but also to each other. Stew making has become a ritual at family reunions, church homecomings and community events throughout the South.

Storyville: The Naked Dance

The first documentary about America's legendary legal red-light district, this program chronicles the sixteen square blocks of decadence that thrived in New Orleans from 1898 until World War I. Two thousand prostitutes worked within this seedy and raucous district to the soundtrack of a new American music called jazz.

Stranger with a Camera

This program frames a compelling look at the moral implications of media representation with the 1967 murder of a filmmaker by a local man on whose property filming took place. In examining a range of views regarding the tragic incident, the program raises questions about the role of filmmakers, the relationship of film subjects to the makers and the medium.

Tell About the South: Voices in Black & White

A series of three feature length films that explore the story of Southern literature in a historical and cultural context. Among those interviewed throughout the series are Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, Willie Morris, John Hope Franklin, Reynolds Price, Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, Rita Dove, Nicki Giovanni, Andrew Lytle, and many more.

The Electric Valley

This feature length documentary explores the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority, controversial since its creation as a federal agency in 1933.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

This landmark four-part series explores segregation from the end of the Civil War to the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Lynchings and beatings by night. Demeaning treatment by day. And a life of crushing subordination for Southern blacks that was maintained by white supremacist laws and customs known as "Jim Crow."