America Beyond the Color Line: Ebony Towers Transcript

Speakers: Announcer, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Colin Powell, Russell Simmons, Maurice Ashley, Richard, Student, Student 2, Daniel Rose, Vernon Jordan, Milton Irvin, Walt Pierson, Donna Pierson, Melody Irvin, Franklin Raines, Dr. Lenora Fulani, Guide, Pam Louis, Student 3, Student 4, Student 5, Businessman, Businesswoman, Student 6, Student 7

(Music)

ANNOUNCER: This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.

(Music)

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.: This is Harvard University, for well over three centuries one of the nurturing wombs of America’s ruling class. When I was growing up in the fifties, I could never have imagined that one of Harvard’s most respected departments would be this one, the Department of Afro-American Studies and that I would teach here.

I’m trying to get black history month to be every month. Most of the kids that we teach at places like this are the children of the middle class, the children of people like me. I mean, I am teaching my classmates’ children. Our experience at Harvard is just one instance of a much larger phenomenon.

(Speaking in background)

In the past few years, African Americans have been achieving in ways that no one, black or white, could ever had dreamed possible a generation ago. We now have African Americans at the heart of government, at the top of the world’s largest corporations, the military, education. Virtually anywhere you look, you will find black people at the highest levels in American society. Not enough black people but who can deny that progress has been made? And yet, and this is the kicker, one in three black children still live at or beneath the poverty line. Two distinct classes have emerged in America and they’re both black.

MAN: We are sustaining power.

(Helicopter blades spinning)