America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans

- AMERICA BEHIND THE COLOR LINE ties in to the eponymous four-part PBS and BBC documentary airing in early 2004, but it is also an important piece of social commentary that stands on its own merits.- AMERICA BEHIND THE COLOR LINE includes thought-provoking essays drawn from interviews with notable African Americans, including Colin Powell, Morgan Freeman, Russell Simmons, Vernon Jordan, Alicia Keys, Bernie Mac, and Quincy Jones, among others.- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., discovered and edited what is very likely the first novel written by a black woman, "The Bondwoman's Narrative (Warner, 4/02), based on one woman's real-life flight from slavery in the 1850s. Celebrated by academics and readers alike, it became a "New York Times bestseller and has over 143,000 hardcover copies in print.- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is one of the foremost scholars working in African American studies today. He is chair of Harvard's African American studies program, general editor of "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (W.W. Norton & Co., 1996), author of "The African American Century (The Free Press, 2000), and he wrote the foreword to "Unchained Memories (Little, Brown and Company, 2/03).

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.

- America Behind The Color Line was published in Warner hardcover (0-446-53273-8) in 1/04.
- Although America Behind The Color Line is a companion to the four-part PBS documentary which aired in 2/04 and will be rebroadcast long into the future, it also stands on its own merits as a triumphant addition to the canon of American social literature.
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered and edited what is very likely the first novel written by an African American woman, The Bondwomen's Narrative (Warner, 2002). Based on one woman's real-life flight from slavery in the 1850s, this novel was celebrated by academics and readers alike and became a New York Times bestseller. It has more than 200,000 combined copies in print.
- The author is the chair of Harvard's African and African American Studies Department. He is the author of The African American Century (The Free Press, 2000).

This title ties in to the eponymous four-part PBS and BBC documentary airing in early 2004, but it is also an important piece of social commentary that stands on its own merits. The book includes thought-provoking essays from Colin Powell, Morgan Freeman, Russell Simmons, Vernon Jordan, Alicia Keys, Bernie Mac, and Quincy Jones.

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.

More than thirty-five years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans wonder just how much of his dream has come true. Now renowned scholar and New York Times bestselling author Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines the surprising social and economic journey African Americans have made since the civil rights era. Using the interviews he conducted for his groundbreaking PBS series, Professor Gates introduces us to forty-four individuals from every segment of the African-American community-from Maya Angelou and Morgan Freeman to convict "Eric Edwards" and a single mother on Chicago's South Side. In their own candid, deeply felt words, each discusses what it means to be African American in the twenty-first century: the joys, the problems, the perils. Together, they reveal a community united by memory and culture yet divided by wealth and lack of opportunity...in an America still struggling to ensure true equality for all.