But it offers something more: The distinguished Harvard University professor packs intellectual heft around the pictures. His book updates black history with recent scholarly research, from detailed estimates of the human cargo during the Atlantic slave trade to the DNA test proving almost conclusively that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one child by his slave Sally Hemings. Interpretive gems are sprinkled throughout.
Besides cataloging achievements, Gates traces the evolution of black thought, activism, and culture, particularly literature and music. The TV dance show Soul Train, he writes, "shaped the tastes of popular American culture in a way that no single program has done before or since."
