During a recent meeting in Washington, Dr. William Harvey, longtime president of Hampton University and Chairman of President Obama’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs expressed his…
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has made it a mission to uncover and celebrate history. One of his most compelling ways to do so is the work he does in genealogy. On the show African-American Lives, he traced the ancestry of African-Americans (including Tom Joyner’s) through slavery and back to Africa. He expanded his reach […]
Cameras followed Kehinde Wiley, a New York-based portrait painter, as he decided to explore the inner and outer beauty of Black women for his latest project.…
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — When Nas became the first rapper invited to trace his family tree through the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” he welcomed the opportunity. But it hit him hard when he saw 1859 documentation of an ancestor being sold as a slave, he said during a panel discussion Wednesday. “First I […]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — LeVar Burton’s fundraising effort to bring “Reading Rainbow” to the online masses is a by-the-book success. The goal of raising $1 million by July 2 was reached within hours of the campaign’s launch Wednesday on Kickstarter, according to the website. More than 34,000 donors had pledged $1.6 million and counting as […]
Black history can’t be made unless there are black men who educated and alive to make it. As Black males fall further and further behind educationally, they also fall further and further behind socially and financially. A new documentary 13 years in the making, American Promise, premieres on PBS on Monday, February 3 at 10 […]
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — PBS will commemorate Black History Month with shows including a profile of “The Color Purple” author Alice Walker. The public television service announced Tuesday that the program about Walker will air Feb. 7 as part of the “American Masters” series. Other PBS shows marking Black History Month in February include “American […]
The latest edition of PBS’ “Blank on Blank” web series takes on previously unreleased audio from a 1994 interview with Tupac Shakur, originally captured on microcassette. The video starts off with the late Shakur telling Entertainment Weekly reporter Benjamin Svetkey that his best case scenario in 15 years is “sprinkled in ashes, smoked up by […]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tavis Smiley, who has brought rare diversity to late-night TV for a decade on PBS, will add another two years to his run. The “Tavis Smiley” show has been renewed through 2015, PBS said Thursday. “The highlight for me is surviving,” Smiley said, noting the growing competitiveness in the late-night talk […]
For IPAD/IPHONE users: When most of us think back to our history lessons about America’s discovery, the first people that come to mind are of European descent. But few know of a slave,known as Esteban the Moor, who traveled America and was the first African to do so. This and many other facts are featured […]
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — After a tragedy like the Trayvon Martin killing, calls routinely arise for a conversation about race. But Henry Louis Gates says a more direct way for change is through schools and their curriculum. That’s what this historian-filmmaker is hoping will happen with “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,” a […]
