'A miraculous wellspring of great American stories...the most exciting and stirring documentary on any subject to appear on television in a long time' - Virginia Heffernan, "The New York Times" on African American Lives. 'Fascinating...Gates covers so much territory, both geographical and intellectual, that by the end he seems to have warp-factored light years' - John Leonard, "New York" magazine on African American Lives. For generations, African Americans have been unable to learn about their heritage or their family trees. Long representing an insurmountable barrier to such research, the dark years of slavery are a period from which it's proved impossible to glean any knowledge. But new genetic testing techniques combined with archival research have opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Using these revolutionary methods, Gates takes prominent African Americans on once unimaginable journeys into their past, tracing family sagas down through U.S. history and even back to Africa.
Those whose recovered pasts collectively form an African American 'people's history' of the United States include such stars as Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, Chris Tucker, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, and Quincy Jones...such leading thinkers and artists as poet Maya Angelou, the Reverend T.D. Jakes, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Harvard Divinity Professor Peter Gomes, author Bliss Broyard, and sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot...and such famous achievers as astronaut Mae Jemison, media personality Tom Joyner, decathlete Jackie Joyner Kersee, and Ebony/Jet publisher Linda Johnson Rice. The show has also been a revelation for Gates himself, who's had to confront surprising truths about his own heritage. And so he writes from a deeply personal perspective on what such knowledge means for African Americans. Delving into these interviewees' ancestry, the show reveals stories of tragedy and triumph, tales of anonymous individuals who made heroic contributions against seemingly insurmountable odds. But it also teaches a tremendous amount about American history, as these individuals' stories are placed in the context of the time.
The book goes deeper than the show in exploring individual stories - revealing dramatic material not mentioned on air. But it also goes further in weaving these narratives together and extracting themes and lessons, as only the brilliant scholar Gates can do.