Summary: Most African Americans struggle to trace their ancestors beyond Emancipation; slavery erased names and family ties with brutal efficiency. But what about the descendants of the handful of free black people who evaded bondage during that terrible time? Musician John Legend and comedian Wanda Sykes discover the extraordinary stories of the free black ancestors they never knew about, while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program features two African-American politicians from different generations and opposite backgrounds. John Lewis grew up in a sharecropping family in rural Georgia, while Cory Booker was raised in an affluent, all-white New Jersey suburb. Although both men have devoted their lives to the betterment of African-American people, neither knows much about his own ancestors. In this episode,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
View online at AVOD
Summary: Michelle Rodriguez, Adrian Grenier and Linda Chavez all share Spanish colonial roots, yet each views their own identity very differently. In this episode we ask what it means to be Hispanic-and find that the answer lies in the tangled histories of European, Native American and African peoples. Crisscrossing Mexico, Spain, the Caribbean, and the Southwest, Professor Gates reveals stories of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
View online at AVOD
Summary: Samuel L. Jackson, Condoleezza Rice and Brown University president, Ruth Simmons, have each climbed to the pinnacle of their profession, yet each started life as a second-class citizen in the Jim Crow south. DNA is used to investigate family mysteries: Where in Africa do they come from and who are the white men in their family trees?
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
View online at AVOD
Summary: Many Americans descend from a variety of European ethnicities, with ancestral roots across every country in Europe. Actors Robert Downey, Jr. and Maggie Gyllenhaal are textbook examples of Americans with a rich medley of European immigrant stories in their family trees. Delve into their deep American roots in early colonial communities and meet their Eastern European Jewish ancestors, who share...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
View online at AVOD
Summary: Their European immigrant ancestors blazed unconventional trails in America, from capturing British ships for the American Revolution to crossing racial barriers in slave-era Louisiana. Generations later, as children growing up in New Orleans, Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis found a deep and abiding friendship through their common love of jazz and of the city itself. In this hour, trace...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
View online at AVOD
Summary: What do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have in common? They are both famous actors and both descend from prominent American families that have been in this country since its inception. But they share something else, too: Both had ancestors who were early opponents of slavery. Bacon's Quaker ancestors repudiated slavery long before the rest of the country, in 1780. And Sedgwick's ancestor...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012