JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025
Great Migrations, the latest documentary series from Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., tells the fascinating story of African American movement over the 20th and 21st centuries, and how it has shaped the nation, by exploring the meaning behind these movements. While many may think of the Great Migration as a singular event in the early 1900s when more than a million Black Americans fled the Jim Crow South for the promised lands of the North, the four-part series also explores subsequent waves of African and African American migration. Viewers will discover how these extensive population shifts shaped the fabric of America’s biggest cities, industries, music, food, politics, and so much more. Moving en masse to other regions of the country is not unique to any single ethnicity or group. However, it is a deeply profound aspect of the modern African American experience because Black people were denied mobility for so long. Theirs was a forced emigration from Africa, followed by centuries of enslavement that kept them in place. “The Great Migration was not just a seismic historical event; it’s an ongoing story,” says Gates. “Our series focuses on three dramatic migrations that have profoundly shaped the African American experience and redefined what it means to be Black in this country.”
Episode 1, “Exodus,” follows the first wave of the Great Migration from the Deep South to the North. Episode 2, “Streets Paved in Gold,” explores the second wave of the Great Migration and how Northern and Western Black communities transformed the cultural and political power of Black America. Episode 3, “One Way Ticket Back,” delves into how a reversal occurring, with Black Americans moving back to the South, continues to reshape the country. The final episode of Great Migrations, “Coming to America,” examines the astonishingly large emigration of Africans and West Indians to this country in recent decades and their profound impact on American culture. Throughout the series, Gates gains the perspectives of dozens of journalists, scholars, professors, and experts including political leader Stacey Abrams, artist George F. Baker III, and journalist Charles M. Blow. As a worldrenowned scholar and one of the preeminent documentarians in public media, Gates has also brought highly regarded programs such as Making Black America and Gospel, as well as the viewer favorite Finding Your Roots, to PBS audiences. Airs Tuesdays, beginning January 28 at 9 p.m. on VPM PBS.
VPM.org