Henry Louis Gates

"A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century...

"A harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American historyBorn a free man in New York, Solomon Northup was abducted in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, he published this exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life--perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives. It became an immediate bestseller and today...

"Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated, landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship, and including more than eight hundred images -- ancient maps, art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters -- Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the achievements...

For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity--an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the...

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. turns again to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned celebrities including Meryl Streep and Queen Noor. Looking to the wider immigrant experience, Professor Gates follows the threads of his guests' lives back to their origins. Along the way, the many stories he uncovers illuminate the American experience.

In light of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, this documentary focuses on many of the controversial aspects of Lincoln's life--race, equality, religion, politics and depression. Interviews re-enactors, relic hunters, authors, scholars and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to gain perspectives on Lincoln's life and thoughts.

"Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote? In a bitter partisan fight over the legislature and Constitution, the answer eventually became yes, though only after two constitutional amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, the impeachment of a president, and an army...

"5,000 years of literature, lyrics, poems, passages, phrases, and proverbs from voices around the world"--Book jacket.