Culture

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

This series chronicles the full sweep of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent right up to today when America remains a nation deeply divided by race.

Black is Beautiful

3m

Black pride is highlighted in the afro hairstyle, the Black is Beautiful message in advertising campaigns, and in Don Cornelius' music and dance program, Soul Train, which brought images of black youth to national television. Musician Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson believes Cornelius used the show's ads to promote Afro-centricity and that the show taught the important lesson of self-love.

Extras + Features

  • America's Earliest Africans: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    America's Earliest Africans

    S1 E1 - 1m 19s

    Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discusses two of the earliest Africans to arrive in North America---free men who journeyed to this continent a century before the first Africans who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. Both were explorers who found hope and opportunity in this new land. But things changed quickly for those who followed them.

  • The Black Atlantic (1500-1800): asset-mezzanine-16x9

    The Black Atlantic (1500-1800)

    S1 E1 - 30s

    The Black Atlantic explores the earliest Africans, both slave and free, who arrived in the New World. Through stories of individuals caught in the transatlantic slave trade, we trace the emergence of plantation slavery in the American South. The episode also looks at what that Era of Revolutions — American, French and Haitian — would mean for African Americans and for slavery in America.

Schedule

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