Posted on 10/17/2013 6:03:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
Can something as tragic and immoral as slavery become, if not less tragic, then noble, even righteous, in the telling? It can and it does in the capable hands of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose brilliant and compelling new six-part series for PBS called "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" premieres Oct. 22 (check local listings).
Gates, whose previous series, "African American Lives," chronicled the heritage of some famous and notable African Americans, takes us on a new journey that begins 500 years ago. While some of the history is familiar, Gates re-tells it in a way that will sound new to many people, especially the young. What I admire most about Gates' approach in this series and the previous one is that he is not a polemicist. He doesn't dwell on blame so much as he conveys documented history, leaving it to viewers to draw their own conclusions.
What many will find shocking is that the first slave traders were Africans who, Gates says, based their prejudices on "ethnic differences" while using "brute power." In episode one, Gates takes us to Sierra Leone where "300,000 Africans were taken." It was only the beginning.
When Europeans entered the slave trade, they deprived their slaves of last names, making family roots difficult to trace, making self-identity all but impossible. Slaves were considered chattel, not people; a commodity, no more significant than a mule, a plow, a wagon or a sack of cottonseed. As such, nothing but the most basic of identifiers was necessary.
One woman in the series, "Priscilla," had a family tree, chiefly because her "master," John Ball, who owned several plantations in South Carolina, kept meticulous records. Priscilla was taken from Sierra Leone at age 10 and purchased by John Ball of Charleston. A descendant, Edward Ball, shows Gates those records. Gates interviews a descendant of Priscilla. It is a rarity, he notes, for African Americans today to trace their ancestry in an unbroken line back to Africa.
At least two character qualities come through in this series: determination and hope. African slaves and their descendants never lost their vision that freedom and opportunity were possible, if not for them, then for those who came after them. Lynchings in the South occurred almost daily. During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers were permitted to hunt and kill any runaway slave who joined the Union Army. Despite this, slaves never lost hope of a better future.
"Hope brought these people through," says Gates. "Love and family would be their brick and mortar."
What has happened to that courage and motivation?
This film series should be required viewing for every African American, especially students. For those who are trapped in cycles of poverty, out-of-wedlock births and absentee fathers, incarceration and violence, someone should ask them: Do you think your ancestors would be proud of you? Did they sacrifice in order for you to sell drugs and behave irresponsibly? Did they die in bondage so that you could squander the freedom you enjoy by becoming slaves to other things?
Just as the Great Wall of China was built with forced labor, so was much of America, including the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. "America probably would not have a culture if it weren't for black people," says one interviewee.
"The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" will serve as an eye-opener for many of us. It should also send the message that despite any leftover discrimination from the past, African Americans face nothing today that approaches what their ancestors endured. If they overcame, then African Americans today can too.
Thirty million people are slaves, half in India: survey
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/thirty-million-people-slaves-half-india-survey-231710875.html
Regarding cycles of poverty and related issues, I’ve heard that the poverty rate is only 5% for people who:
avoid out of wedlock teen pregnancy
graduate from high school
stay out of trouble with the law
are in stable marriages
And the above is true for people of any race or background.
The idea that ghetto blacks are suffering the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is laughable, but, a big number of liberals and Al Sharpton/Jessie Jackson types push that false narrative.
You mean culture affects lifestyle?
Gates, where have I heard that name before?????????
Ahhhhh Yes Now I remember, He is the guy who got Obama to say the police acted badly when they arrested his racist ass./ Or is that another Henry gates.
It is impossible to tell the truth of slavery in this country. Look at the last attempt ROOTS, it was all all a lie, he lost his lawsuits and in the fullness of time was a proven liar.
500 years ago. That would be in 1513. There were no Africans in Colonial America in 1513. There was no Colonial America in 1513. So whose Slave story is 500 years old?
I’ll take a miss on having more “noble blacks, blame YT” stuffed down my throat.
I caught one of his PBS shows about DNA & ancestry a couple years back; it was actually pretty good. I kept asking myself: how can this guy who seems so high class, laid back, intelligent, with loads of common sense react in such stupid manner when the local cop questioned him when he was caught breaking into his own residence? You see this same violent reaction with many Africans all over the world when they encounter problems. Now I call that genetic also and slavery was never able to breed that trait out.
Is that Prof. Gates, that smooth-talking but self-inflated egotistical black elitist A-hole from Harvard? I won’t be watching.
Not to defend any practices during slavery, but sometimes the BS just gets a little too thick. How did anyone deprive slaves of their last names? The slaves knew what their names were when they arrived in the Americas and only five or six generations lived before they were freed in most cases.
It's hard to believe that last names could not be passed down orally over a few, or even many generations among people who relied on oral history since they had not developed written language.
Sometimes the stories told to make some historical points just don't make sense.
The TV series “Roots” and the name Kunta Kinte comes to mind, doesn’t it?
Actually, the general African slave trade is more than 1,000 years old as it had been going strong for several centuries in the Muslim/Arab world before there was any European and American involvement. White folks were late comers.
When’s somebody going to make a movie called “what actually happened” starring the Spainards?
Yep, and that's probably when I first wondered how anyone could have prevented the slaves from passing on knowledge of their last names and what areas in Africa they had lived before being captured into slavery.
On that one, the slaves apparently just didn't pass on such information, for whatever reason. No one could have prevented that information from being passed on even if they wanted to prevent it.
If Cal Thomas’ impression of this series is correct, it should be required viewing in every school. It is time to tell the Americans of slave-heritage that they should respect the strength and fortitude of their ancestors, and honor them by making their own lives as productive as possible in this new century.
right, every culture from way back took slaves. Egyptians comes to mind with the Jews. But an African American story of 500 years? The tying in America, at least a hundred years before the first Colonists who didn’t have slaves (White poor slaves though)? Semantics maybe, but maybe also misleading?
How do we even know that Africans had surnames centuries ago? Did they have a written language where these tribal people lived? If anything, they probably used a patrynomic system: Bob, son of John = Bob Johnsen Also did their tribal life include the nuclear family, or did the 'village' raise the child?
For that matter, during the Civil War, they were permitted to hunt and kill Yankee soldiers of any stripe, not just runaway slaves who joined up. (Sheesh!)
Here is a link someone posted a few months back that discusses the full 1,400 years of the African slave trade, told mostly by African historians. You have to read subtitles, but it's well worth it for anyone interested in the subject.
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