Gertrude Jeannette

Cool Black private eye John Shaft is hired by a crime lord to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.

A trio of runaway slaves evade authorities in the Old West.

Railroad laborer Duff Anderson struggles to maintain his dignity and marriage to a preacher's daughter in the racially segregated South.

A look at the confluence of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and blacklists with the post-war activism by African Americans seeking more and better roles on radio, television, and stage. It begins in Harlem, measures the impact of Paul Robeson and the campaign to bring him down, looks at the role of HUAC, J. Edgar Hoover and of journalists such as Ed Sullivan, and ends with a tribute to Canada Lee. Throughout are interviews with men and women who were there, including Dick Campbell of the Rose McLendon Players and Fredrick O'Neal of the American Negro Theatre. In the 1940s and 1950s, anti-Communism was one more tool to maintain Jim Crow and to keep down African-Americans.

An aspiring dancer and her two wicked sisters resent their mother's love for a foster daughter.

Excerpts from the 1969 Off-Broadway production at the Cherry Lane Theater of To Be Young, Gifted and Black: The World of Lorraine Hansberry, adapted by Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry's widower, and directed by Gene Frankel.

American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.