Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Making Futures brings together 18 young entrepreneurs from 14 countries doing incredible work across the continent. Their stories are both inspirational and aspirational; providing a template for readers who might be interested in embarking on their own entrepreneurial journey, and allowing others to see the incredible energy and work that is happening across the continent. There’s the story of David Sengeh, who has worked on combatting malaria...

As Black people fought for full citizenship, this episode explores how free African Americans exercised their self-determination by building communities, establishing schools, and creating associations that would become the foundational pillars of Black America. Host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the organizations, networks and artistic impression created by and for Black people.

Gates charts the ancient rise of Christianity & Islam, whose economic & cultural influence stretched from Egypt to Ethiopia. Learn of African religious figures like King Lalibela, an Ethiopian saint and Menelik, bringer of the Ark of the Covenant.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the roots of African American religion beginning with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the extraordinary ways enslaved Africans preserved and adapted their faith practices from slavery to emancipation.

Journey with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to Kenya, Egypt and beyond as he discovers the origins of man, the formation of early human societies and the creation of significant cultural and scientific achievements on the African continent.

The final hour brings the story up to the present day. Gates celebrates how far African Americans have come toward equality and raises hard questions about the obstacles that remain.

The second hour dramatizes the diverging paths for African Americans and outbursts of white backlash that emerged in the 1970s and early '80s. Gates explores how African Americans found new sources of hope from the creation of hip-hop.

What do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have in common? They are both famous actors and both descend from prominent American families that have been in this country since its inception. But they share something else, too: Both had ancestors who were early opponents of slavery. Bacon's Quaker ancestors repudiated slavery long before the rest of the country, in 1780. And Sedgwick's ancestor Theodore Sedgwick argued the freedom case of Elizabeth Freeman,...

This program features two African-American politicians from different generations and opposite backgrounds. John Lewis grew up in a sharecropping family in rural Georgia, while Cory Booker was raised in an affluent, all-white New Jersey suburb. Although both men have devoted their lives to the betterment of African-American people, neither knows much about his own ancestors. In this episode, Booker is introduced to his white great-grandfather, a man...

Many Americans descend from a variety of European ethnicities, with ancestral roots across every country in Europe. Actors Robert Downey, Jr. and Maggie Gyllenhaal are textbook examples of Americans with a rich medley of European immigrant stories in their family trees. Delve into their deep American roots in early colonial communities and meet their Eastern European Jewish ancestors, who share almost identical migration stories. From the Mayflower...