The Learning Tree is a 1969 American coming-of-age film written, produced and directed by Gordon Parks, who also scored the film. It depicts the life of Newt Winger, a teenager growing up in Cherokee Flats, Kansas, in the 1920s and chronicles his journey into manhood marked with tragic events. Based on Parks' 1963 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, The Learning Tree was the first film directed by a black filmmaker for a major American film studio, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts.
Columbia is a city in and the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee. The population was 41,690 as of the 2020 United States census. Columbia is included in the Nashville metropolitan area.
The Lincoln County War was an Old West conflict between rival factions which began in 1878 in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, the predecessor of the state of New Mexico, and continued until 1881. The feud became famous because of the participation of William H. Bonney. Other notable participants included Sheriff William J. Brady, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessmen Alexander McSween, James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy.
The Legend of Luke is a fantasy novel by Brian Jacques, published in 1999. It is the 12th book and fourth chronologically in the Redwall series.
Ernest James Gaines was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. Four of his works were made into television movies.
Go Down, Moses is a 1942 collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel. The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one". Though originally published as a short story collection, Faulkner considered the book to be a novel in the same way The Unvanquished is considered a novel. Because of this, most editions no longer print "and other stories" in the title.
Beloved is a 1987 novel by American novelist Toni Morrison. Set in the period after the American Civil War, the novel tells the story of a dysfunctional family of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. The narrative of Beloved derives from the life of Margaret Garner, a slave in the slave state of Kentucky who escaped and fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856.
A Lesson Before Dying is Ernest J. Gaines' eighth novel, published in 1993. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel is based on the true story of Willie Francis, a young Black American man best known for surviving a failed electrocution in the state of Louisiana in 1946.
Margaret Garner, called "Peggy", was an enslaved African American woman who killed her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. Garner and her family had escaped enslavement in January 1856 by traveling across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, but they were apprehended by U.S. Marshals acting under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Garner's defense attorney, John Jolliffe, moved to have her tried for murder in Ohio, to be able to get a trial in a free state and to challenge the Fugitive Slave Law. Garner's story was the inspiration for the novel Beloved (1987) by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and its subsequent adaptation into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey (1998).
Station West is a 1948 American Western black-and-white film directed by Sidney Lanfield and based on a Western novel by Luke Short. Burl Ives plays a small role and sings the following songs on the soundtrack: "A Stranger in Town," "The Sun's Shining Warm," and "A Man Can't Grow Old."
Willis Virgil McCall was sheriff of Lake County, Florida. He was elected for seven consecutive terms from 1944 to 1972. He gained national attention in the Groveland Case in 1949. In 1951, he shot two defendants in the case while he was transporting them to a new trial and killed one on the spot. Claiming self-defense, he was not indicted for this action. He also enforced anti-miscegenation laws and was a segregationist.
The Groveland Four were four African American men, Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. In July 1949, the four were accused of raping a white woman and severely beating her husband in Lake County, Florida. The oldest, Thomas, tried to elude capture and was killed that month. The others were put on trial. Shepard and Irvin received death sentences, and Greenlee was sentenced to life in prison. The events of the case led to serious questions about the arrests, allegedly coerced confessions and mistreatment, and the unusual sentencing following their convictions. Their incarceration was exacerbated by their systemic and unlawful treatment—including the death of Shepherd, and the near-fatal shooting of Irvin. Greenlee was paroled in 1962 and Irvin in 1968. All four were posthumously exonerated by the state of Florida in 2021.
How the West Was Won is an American Western television series that starred James Arness, Eva Marie Saint, Fionnula Flanagan, Bruce Boxleitner, and Richard Kiley. Loosely based on the 1962 Cinerama film of the same name, it began with a two-hour television film, The Macahans, in 1976, followed by a mini-series in 1977, and a regular series in 1978 and 1979.
Peter Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor who was best known for his work in Westerns. Fix appeared in more than 100 movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career between 1925 and 1981. Fix portrayed Marshal Micah Torrance, opposite Chuck Connors's character in The Rifleman from 1958 to 1963. He later appeared with Connors in the 1966 Western film Ride Beyond Vengeance.
Crossfire Trail is a 2001 American made-for-television western film directed by Simon Wincer and starring Tom Selleck, Virginia Madsen, and Wilford Brimley. Based on the 1954 Louis L'Amour Western novel of the same name, the film is about a wanderer named Rafe Caradoc who swears an oath to his dying best friend to look after his beloved wife and Wyoming ranch, only to encounter other forces who strongly desire the ranch and the woman for their own purposes.
The Union Correctional Institution, formerly referred to as Florida State Prison, Raiford Prison and State Prison Farm is a Florida Department of Corrections state prison located in unincorporated Union County, Florida, near Raiford.
Treasure of Matecumbe is a 1976 American adventure western film directed by Vincent McEveety and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It was based on the novel A Journey to Matecumbe by Robert Lewis Taylor. The filming locations were in Danville, Kentucky, Sacramento River at Colusa, California and Walt Disney Productions' Golden Oak Ranch in California. The final scene at a beached shipwreck was filmed at Walt Disney World's Discovery Island.
A Gathering of Old Men is a 1987 American-German television drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and based on the novel of the same name. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. The film was released as television film in the US. For his performance actor Louis Gossett Jr. was nominated at the Emmy Awards for "Outstanding lead actor in a miniseries or a special".
Flowing Gold is a 1940 American adventure film starring John Garfield, Frances Farmer, and Pat O'Brien. It was based on the novel of the same name by Rex Beach. The novel had already been adapted to film in 1924 but that was in silent form. The 1940 film with audible dialogue is set in the American oilfields and the title refers to oil.
Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined is a young adult vampire-romance novel by Stephenie Meyer. The story is a gender-swapped retelling of the first book in the Twilight series, and introduces Beau Swan and Edythe Cullen in place of Bella and Edward. The book was originally published on October 6, 2015 as part of an "oversized flip-book pairing" with Twilight to celebrate the original novel's tenth anniversary. An audiobook (CD) was released by Penguin Random House on the same day.
