America Beyond the Color Line

In four programs, Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels to four different parts of America - the East Coast, the deep South, inner-city Chicago and Hollywood. He explores this rich and diverse landscape, social as well as geographic, and meets the people who are defining black America, from the most famous and influential - Colin Powell, Quincy Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Fannie Mae's Franklin Raines, Jesse Jackson, Russell Simmons, Chris Tucker, Alicia Keys, Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman - to those at the grassroots.

Coming face to face with the people and places that constitute the African-American experience today, Gates confronts the issues he spends his time writing and thinking about: race, identity, integration, culture, class, the legacy of history and what it means to be black and American today.