Art + Culture
Black Ancestry Chronicled in New PBS Documentary Series
October 3, 2013·By BLAC Editorial
In ‘The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,’ Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. examines Black history, from slavery to modern day, in six episodes
October 3, 2013
In his most personal journey to date, Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. chronicles the African-American's position in society from slavery to today-as leaders in arts, politics and more-in The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. This six-part docu-series begins at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013.
"The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience," Gates says in a press release. The filmmaker is an Alphonse Fletcher University professor at Harvard and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research.
The hour-long-episode series runs every Tuesday on PBS until Nov. 26, 2013.
Gates, 63, has hosted many PBS programs and is critically acclaimed for his documentaries, such as Finding Your Roots and Wonders of the African World-and also for writing and editing numerous books and articles.
Among many subjects the new series examines in relation to Blacks, racism is one Gates has experienced firsthand-most recently in July of 2009, when he was racially profiled and arrested as a burglar outside of his own home in Cambridge, Mass.
"Since my senior year in high school, when I watched Bill Cosby narrate a documentary about black history," Gates notes in the release, "I've longed to share those stories in great detail to the broadest audience possible, young and old, Black and White, scholars and the general public. I believe that my colleagues and I have achieved this goal through The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross."
For more information about this series' premiere, visit the BLAC Detroit online events calendar.
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