UNITED STATES | Five Hundred Years in Six Parts: Henry Louis Gates Jr. on ‘Many Rivers to Cross’
PBS NewsHour, Many Rivers to Cross recounts African-American history
PBS NewsHour published Gwen Ifill’s conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr. on 26 November 2013. It runs about seven and a half minutes.
The subject is Many Rivers to Cross, Gates’s six-part series for PBS, which NewsHour describes as recounting “500 years of African-American history” — “the journey of black Americans who created hope and persistence in the face of brutal discrimination.”
The series itself is not on the Video Reel. This interview is the doorway to it: the Harvard professor discussing the series with Gwen Ifill.
For a Caribbean reader the connection is not a stretch. The African-American story and the West Indian one begin in the same place — the same trade, the same crossing — before they divide on arrival. Watching how an American historian frames five centuries of it is a useful mirror for how the region frames its own.
Video: PBS NewsHour (@PBSNewsHour), “‘Many Rivers to Cross’ recounts African-American history”, Gwen Ifill with Henry Louis Gates Jr., published 26 November 2013. Quoted passages are from PBS NewsHour’s own published video description. WiredJA is not affiliated with PBS.
