EXCERPT
In a new book and related PBS documentary, the author explores how the Black church is the space where cultural ties to Africa come to life in mutated but still recognizable form.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored twenty-four books and created twenty-one documentary films, including Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program-Long Form, as well as a Peabody Award, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and NAACP Image Award.
History
Pouring through Tupac was the poetry of concrete ’hoods, of ganglands and cops, of the tragedy of early prison and death, prosecuting the New World for what it had robbed from so many.
In an excerpt from Tradition and the Black Atlantic, Henry Louis Gates Jr. says forget the either/or struggle of America’s culture wars and embrace a multi-cultural approach to the world.
In an excerpt from his book, Faces of America, Henry Louis Gates recounts the unknown story of legendary film director Mike Nichols’ family in Russia—and their escape to America.
With the help of Henry Louis Gates, cellist Yo-Yo Ma discovers a family genealogy dating back 255 years—a bamboo volume that dictates 60 generations of Ma family names.