The African Americans - Many Rivers to Cross - with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

TAG: Emancipation Proclamation

  • Texas Juneteenth Day Celebration, 1900

    What Is Juneteenth?

    When a general announced in Texas that slaves were free, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army’s authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. Continue reading →

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  • The Truth Behind ’40 Acres and a Mule’

    We’ve all heard the story of the “40 acres and a mule” promise to former slaves. It’s a staple of black history lessons, and it’s the name of Spike Lee’s film company. The promise was the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves, and it was astonishingly radical for its time, proto-socialist in its implications. In fact, such a policy would be radical in any country today: the federal government’s massive confiscation of private property — some 400,000 acres — formerly owned by Confederate land owners, and its methodical redistribution to former black slaves. What most of us haven’t heard is that the idea really was generated by black leaders themselves. Continue reading →

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Many Rivers Posters

A collection of shareable, downloadable posters created for The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross series, featuring quotations by notable African Americans including Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Jackie Robinson, and Malcolm X.
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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is a film by Kunhardt McGee Productions, THIRTEEN Productions LLC, Inkwell Films, in assocation with Ark Media.