Tonight's segments, "The South: The Black Belt" and "Chicago: The Streets of Heaven" begin his exploration by blowing apart nagging misperceptions about the South versus the North by visiting Birmingham, Memphis and Atlanta, still remembered by most in their historical contexts as hotbeds of racial conflict.
"The Streets of Heaven" has a contrary title, since it looks at life in the Ida B. Wells and Robert Taylor housing projects, the most glaring evidence of how the Great Migration of the 1920s and '30s gave rise to yawning class differences between urban blacks. While urban blacks arrived in Chicago first and rose into middle-class positions, rural blacks, the later arrivals, fared poorly in comparison.
"We gave them almost no help," observed black historian Timuel Black. "Separation was dramatic and complete."
Through conversations with black mayors, Memphis' black police chief and an African American officer in the Army, and Morgan Freeman, who makes his home in Dixie, the South comes off in a far better light. All are proof of how much the urban South has changed, but Gates' interview with an interracial couple comfortably walking down the streets of Birmingham is a more obvious example of this.
Then Gates visits Atlanta's opulent homes and all-black gated communities, wondering what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would think of how well this generation is living out his dream.
Tomorrow's segments, "New York: Ebony Towers" and "Los Angeles: Black Hollywood," feature interviews with Raines, Vernon Jordan, Russell Simmons, Colin Powell, Alicia Keys, John Singleton, Don Cheadle and Chris Tucker. The sheer volume of celebrities may make it the most attractive half of Gates' special.
Here, too, the disconnect grows even more apparent. For example, when Gates asks Secretary of State Powell what he means to young black people as the first African American in his position, he replies that he hopes to be a role model not just to blacks, "but a role model for what anyone can achieve."
It's a heartening thought, until Gates talks to New York City community activist Dr. Lenora Fulani, who works with kids from Queens and Brooklyn who don't even know who Powell is. They didn't even realize the World Trade Center existed until 9/11.
"How can you live in America and not know who Colin Powell is?" Gates asks incredulously.
"I don't know," Fulani replies. "How can you live in New York and never see the World Trade Center?"
| That's the meat of Seattle Post-Intelligencer television critic Melanie McFarland's "'Beyond the Color Line' has some striking surprises" on PBS's "America Beyond the Color Line With Henry Louis Gates Jr." (Be sure to check local listings for air times.)
posted in articles on February 2, 2004 11:35 PM | t (0)
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