With the recent success of works such as Django Unchained and 12 Years A Slave, PBS is primed to keep the edutainment going with The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross mini-series. Hosted by acclaimed author and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the series looks to analyze the details the moment Black people stepped foot on a ship and everything that followed afterwards.
Reports the Huffington Post:
Slavery in the United States was once a roaring success whose wounds still afflict the country today.
So says Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who examines both its success and shame in “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,” his new PBS documentary series that traces 500 years of black history.
“Slavery is a perfect example of why we need limits on the more unfortunate aspects of human nature,” he says. “Slavery was capitalism gone berserk.”
The horrifically profitable practice of slavery and the brutal inhumanity of Jim Crow loom large in “The African Americans” (premiering Tuesday at 8 p.m. EDT; check local listings), which, through its six hours, performs a neat trick: Its reach extends far beyond American shores, venturing through the Caribbean region and all the way to Africa, while deftly folding this sprawl of black history into the larger American story that, too often, has kept the role of black America shunted to the margins.
The six episode documentary will starting tomorrow (Tuesday; 8 p.m. EDT) and run towards the end of November. Check out images from the series in the gallery.
For more information, check local listings and visit the official site here.
Photo: PBS
