{"id":34554,"date":"2013-11-02T21:59:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T21:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34554"},"modified":"2013-11-02T21:59:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T21:59:59","slug":"black-history%e2%80%99s-missing-chapters-%e2%80%98the-african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross%e2%80%99-on-pbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34554","title":{"rendered":"Black History\u2019s Missing Chapters: \u2018The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,\u2019 on PBS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black History\u2019s Missing Chapters: \u2018The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,\u2019 on PBS<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2013-10-18
\n\u00a0
\nFelicia R. Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

The television mini-series \u201cRoots<\/a>,\u201d about the slave Kunta Kinte<\/a> and his descendants, is a classic, inspired by real lives and real history. But it is a truism among historians that young people do not know enough about African-American contributions to history. Even a tiny slice of recent history \u2014 the civil rights movement \u2014 is not required teaching in most states, the Southern Poverty Law Center<\/a> found in a recent assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt boils down to Rosa Parks<\/a>, Martin Luther King<\/a> and \u2018I Have a Dream<\/a>,\u2019 \u201d Maureen Costello<\/a>, director of the center\u2019s Teaching Tolerance Project<\/a>, said of the typical level of knowledge. Films and the occasional series on black history have helped fill in the gaps, creating a kind of \u201ccultural accretion,\u201d Ms. Costello added, but television in recent years has not consistently offered informative entertainment.<\/p>\n

When \u201cRoots\u201d was broadcast in 1977, \u201cthe whole nation watched it because there were three networks vying for our attention,\u201d Ms. Costello said. \u201cAs a culture, we\u2019ve become so fragmented. I think more Americans can reasonably discuss the meth trade or the Mafia because of \u2018Breaking Bad<\/a>\u2019 and \u2018The Sopranos<\/a>\u2019 than they can African-American history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Into the breach has stepped Henry Louis Gates Jr.<\/a>, assisted by dozens of historians. His six-part series, \u201cThe African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross<\/a>,\u201d beginning on Tuesday on PBS, aims to chronicle 500 years of black history. The program starts with Juan Garrido<\/a>, a free black man whose 1513 expedition with Spanish explorers in Florida made him the first known African to arrive in what is now the United States, and ends with Barack Obama<\/a> in the White House in 2013, a time of complexity and contradictions for black Americans. In between, Professor Gates, director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, draws on the latest scholarship to put flesh on characters like the resilient South Carolina slave girl Priscilla as well as her descendants…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black History\u2019s Missing Chapters: \u2018The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,\u2019 on PBS The New York Times 2013-10-18 \u00a0 Felicia R. Lee The television mini-series \u201cRoots,\u201d about the slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants, is a classic, inspired by real lives and real history. But it is a truism among historians that young people do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,20],"tags":[4913,4912,2935,2640,2839,2327],"class_list":["post-34554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-felicia-lee","tag-felicia-r-lee","tag-henry-louis-gates-jr","tag-new-york-times","tag-television","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}