and New York Times bestselling author Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines the surprising social and economic journey African Americans have made since the civil rights era. Using the interviews he conducted for his groundbreaking PBS series, Professor Gates introduces us to forty-four individuals from every segment of the African-American community-from Maya Angelou and Morgan Freeman to convict "Eric Edwards" and a single mother on Chicago's South Side. In their own candid, deeply felt words, each discusses what it means to be African American in the twenty-first century: the joys, the problems, the perils. Together, they reveal a community united by memory and culture yet divided by wealth and lack of opportunity...in an America still struggling to ensure true equality for all.

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