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Henry Louis Gates | Himself / host and narrator | |
Bernard E. Powers Jr. | Himself / historian | |
Peniel E. Joseph | Himself / historian | |
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. | Himself / lawyer and civil rights activist | |
David Levering Lewis | Himself / historian | |
Vincent Brown | Himself / historian / Harvard University | |
Thavolia Glymph | Herself - Historian | |
Ahmir-Khalib Thompson | Himself | |
Dan Rather | Himself / former news anchor / CBS Evening News | |
Colin Powell | Himself | |
Duke Ellington | Himself | |
Chuck D | Himself | |
Kathleen Cleaver | Herself / professor of law and former member of Black Panther Party | |
Hari Jones | Himself / assistant director and curator / African American Civil War Freedom Foundation and Museu | |
Michelle Alexander | Herself / associate professor of law / The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law | |
Annette Gordon-Reed | Herself / historian | |
Martin Duberman | Himself / historian | |
Jelani Cobb | Himself / historian | |
Donald Bogle | Himself / author | |
Maulana Karenga | Himself / historian and co-founder of US Organization |
Director |
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Producer |
Rebecca Brillhart
Rachel Dretzin Henry Louis Gates Leslie Asako Gladsjo |
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Writer |
Henry Louis Gates
Paul Taylor |
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Cinematography |
Graham Smith
Stephen McCarthy |
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Musician |
Paul Brill
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Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounts the full trajectory of African-American history in his groundbreaking new six-part series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Written and presented by Professor Gates, the six-hour series explores the evolution of the African-American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives they developed — forging their own history, culture and society against unimaginable odds. Commencing with the origins of slavery in Africa, the series moves through five centuries of remarkable historic events right up to the present — when America is led by a black president, yet remains a nation deeply divided by race. |
Seen it: Yes 60 mins 10/22/2013 1. The Black Atlantic (1500-1800) | ||
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The earliest Africans, both slave and free; the emergence of plantation slavery in the American South; freedom movements abound in the late 18th-century.
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Seen it: Yes 60 mins 10/29/2013 2. The Age of Slavery (1800-1860) | ||
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Black lives change dramatically following the American Revolution; individuals including Harriet Tubman, Richard Allen and Frederick Douglass push the issue of slavery to the forefront of national politics.
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Seen it: Yes 60 mins 11/5/2013 3. Into the Fire (1861-1896) | ||
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Blacks flee plantations to serve in the United States Colored Troops; after emancipation, blacks seek economic, political and civil rights.
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Seen it: Yes 60 mins 11/12/2013 4. Making a Way Out of No Way (1897-1940) | ||
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Blacks search for opportunities in the North and the West; black arts and culture grow in spite of Jim Crow.
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Seen it: Yes 60 mins 11/19/2013 5. Rise! (1940-1968) | ||
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Blacks returning from World War II continue to face racial violence on the home front; Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a city bus in 1955; Martin Luther King Jr. promotes a nonviolent approach to integrate blacks and whites.
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Seen it: Yes 60 mins 11/26/2013 6. A More Perfect Union (1968-2013) | ||
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Class disparity threatens to split the black community in the late 1960s; economic and political forces isolate the black urban poor; many issues remain unresolved, despite the election of America's first black president in 2008.
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