The PBS documentary, which aired last fall in six weekly episodes, was released on DVD Tuesday. [Obamas] second campaign and his reelection was even more important, said Gates by phone from his office in Cambridge, Mass. Winning a second term showed that Americans - at least, some of them - had given their imprimatur to their first black leader. For Gates, Obamas victory fulfills a promise, that a people who once were denied the most basic human rights could thrive in a hostile environment and eventually reach positions of power. Yet both elections were marked by some of the most rabid racist rhetoric seen in the country since the 1960s. None of us could anticipate the scale and the depth of animosity heaped upon our first black president, said Gates, 63, a West Virginia native who was a teenager during the civil rights movement. If there is one theme that persists through the six parts of Many Rivers to Cross, its this very dialectic: As Gates documents, each historical advancement achieved by black Americans was coupled with a backlash that was often violent. Armed slave rebellions were crushed without mercy; the progress of black and white abolitionists in the 18th and 19th centuries was met with harsh local and federal crackdowns and eventually a cataclysm in the 1860s, the Civil War, that left 620,000 dead. Similarly, Gates episode on the civil rights movement shows how its success in changing legislation came at the cost of police brutality and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Many Rivers to Cross marks a refreshing break from the run-of-the mill documentary: No airtime is given to static shots of talking heads rambling on about academic abstractions. For Gates, the best way to study history is through stories about events and the people who shaped them.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 18:34:26 +0000
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