Making Black America: Through the Grapevine

The four-part series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris explores the Black American experience

• Christina Zeiders
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  Christina Zeiders is the Communications Specialist at WITF. She helps get the word out about all of WITF's programs, events and community conversations.

The latest documentary series by renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Making Black America: Through the Grapevine, premieres Tuesday, October 4 at 9pm on WITF TV and the PBS Video app.

Over the course of four weekly episodes, the series takes viewers on a journey into an extraordinary work that highlights Black people’s ability to collectively prosper, defy white supremacy and define Blackness in ways that transformed America itself.

“For centuries, ‘the Grapevine’ has connected Black Americans in formal and informal networks not just as a way of communicating but of building and sustaining communities large and small,” said Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the program’s host, writer, and executive producer. “From churches to fraternal and sororal organizations to Black Twitter, this is the story of the making of Black America and how, in the making, a people did more than survive the onslaught of enslavement and segregation. They redefined America and its cultural gifts to the world.”

Dr. Gates, the series executive producer and host, collaborated with directors Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris to tell this story. All three worked together on Gates’ last documentary series, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song (2021).

Directors Holman and Harris noted, “throughout history, African Americans have created a dynamic community and culture that flourished beyond the color line. Making Black America celebrates the places and institutions that were built by and for Black people with hope, love, and sustained by joy.”

The series tells the story of vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” It recounts the establishment of the Prince Hall Masons in 1775 through the formation of all-Black towns and business districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, destinations for leisure and the social media phenomenon of Black Twitter.

Gates sits with noted scholars, politicians, cultural leaders and old friends including Charles M. Blow (journalist and commentator), Angela Davis (political activist, scholar and author), André Holland (actor), Fab 5 Freddie (hip-hop pioneer and visual artist), Jason King (chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music), Killer Mike (rapper and activist) to discuss this world behind the color line and what it looks like today.

Watch Making Black America each Tuesday in October at 9pm through the PBS Video app or on WITF TV.

• Episode One premieres October 4 at 9pm: As early as 1775, free Black people in the North and South built towns, established schools, and held conventions ─ creating robust networks to address the political, economic, and social needs of the entire Black community.
• Episode Two premieres October 11 at 9pm: With the hopes of a multi-racial community dashed, African Americans turn within, creating a community that not only sustains but empowers. From HBCUs to Black businesses to the Harlem Renaissance to political organizations, Black life flourished.
• Episode Three premieres October 18 at 9pm: To survive a period of economic cataclysm and global war, African Americans relied on informal economies, grassroots organizations and cultural innovations behind the color line to sustain themselves and dismantle the oppressive realities of Jim Crow.
• Episode Four premieres October 25 at 9pm: Despite the gains of legal desegregation, all Black political and cultural movements – from Black Power to Black Twitter – continued to provide a safe space for a community riven by class, sexuality and generational divisions to debate, organize and celebrate.