The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, is an award-winning six-part documentary series by noted historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Covering from about the year 1500 through to the new millennium, the series addresses in a detailed yet entertaining way the challenges faced by African Americans throughout these centuries as well as their many triumphs. Each episode lasts approximately one hour, making the series a convenient one to work into a typical high-school class period.


About this African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross Worksheet

This worksheet provides students with 66 fill-in-the-blank problems for them to solve as they watch Episode 1 of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, which covers the period of 1500 to 1800 in African American history.


Summary of Episode 1: The Black Atlantic

The Black Atlantic explores the truly global experiences that created the African-American people. Beginning a full century before the first documented “20-and-odd” slaves who arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, the episode portrays the earliest Africans, both slave and free, who arrived on these shores. But the transatlantic slave trade would soon become a vast empire connecting three continents. Through stories of individuals caught in its web, like a 10-year-old girl named Priscilla who was transported from Sierra Leone to South Carolina in the mid-18th century, we trace the emergence of plantation slavery in the American South. The late 18th century saw a global explosion of freedom movements, and The Black Atlantic examines what that Era of Revolutions — American, French and Haitian — would mean for African Americans and for slavery in America.

Teacher Convenience Features Included in this The African Americans Worksheets Packet:

---Time-stamps option for all problems
---A fast-grade answer key
---A full-context answer key