(photo by Peter Simon)
“”The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience,” said Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. whose new series, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” will premier on PBS October 22.
The series is accompanied by a book with the same name, which Kam Williams reviewed for The Afro:
By and large, history books have marginalized the African-American community by either omitting or minimizing its cornucopia of contributions to the country. Similarly, the African-American psyche has been trivialized by a host of harmful stereotypes which suggest that we aren’t as diverse or as capable of experiencing the same full range of emotions as Caucasians.
How else can you explain that the mayor of New York City might rationalize employing the “stop and frisk” police tactic against blacks in wholesale fashion, as if criminality is a racial trait instead of judging people by the content of their character as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King a half-century ago? Fortunately,”The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” has just been published in the face of such persisting, institutionalized prejudice.
