The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

Excellent PBS documentary chronicling 5 centuries of African American history. It explores the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies, and religious and social perspectives that African Americans have developed against unimaginable odds. All of these elements define black culture and society in its extraordinarily rich and compelling diversity from slavery to freedom, from the plantation to the White House. Hosted by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and drawing on some of America’s top historians and heretofore untapped primary sources, it sheds new light on the experience of being an African American.