America Behind The Color Line : Dialogues with African Americans

The readable companion, in the oral-history tradition of Studs Terkel, to the PBS documentary series, peeking behind the veil "that still, far too often, separates black America from white." Renowned scholar and New York Times bestselling author Gates delivers a stirring and authoritative companion to the major new PBS documentary America Behind the Color Line . The book includes thought-provoking essays from Colin Powell, Morgan Freeman, Russell Simmons, Vernon Jordan, Alicia Keys, Bernie Mac, and Quincy Jones. "Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines the surprising social and economic journey African Americans have made. Using the interviews he conducted for his PBS series, Professor Gates portrays a community united by shared memory and a strong, vibrant culture, yet divided by wealth and lack of opportunity - a people still struggling to ensure true equality for all." "Professor Gates traveled across the country interviewing forty-four famous and not-so-famous individuals from parts of the African-American community - the "Black Elite," "The New South," "Chicago's South Side," and "Black Hollywood." In their own words, each discusses what it means to be African American in the twenty-first century: from Maya Angelou and Morgan Freeman's reflections on "returning home" to the South ... to convict "Eric Edwards" telling us how his peers find self-sufficiency and prove their adulthood ... from an interracial couple describing how they cope with the remnants of racism in Birmingham to a single mother's insights into how life on Chicago's newly renovated South Side still presents its own particular obstacles and dangers."--Jacket