Learn about slavery in the United States and the migration of African Americans within the country.

Astoria, Queens, New York is the melting pot of melting pots, with a range of skin tones, heights, weights, hair types, and eye shapes, to say nothing of their beliefs, cultures, languages, and trades. But just how different are we? At a street fair in the heart of Astoria, on a sweltering July day, geneticist Spencer Wells and his team take DNA samples from this amazingly diverse group. These samples will show how a selection of New Yorkers: a waitress,...

The movement of African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North is one of the most momentous yet least heralded sagas of American history. This award-winning documentary tells the story of the mid-century black migration through the testimony of some Mississippi Delta natives who relocated to Chicago during this era. A steelworker, newspaper editor, blues musician, and others recall the trip up Highway 61 in search of good factory...

"In the 60,000 years since people began colonizing the continents, a continuous feature of human civilization has been mobility. History is replete with seismic global events-pandemics and plagues, wars and genocides. Each time, after a great catastrophe, our innate impulse toward physical security compels us to move. The map of humanity isn't settled-not now, not ever. The filled-with-crises 21st century promises to contain the most dangerous and...

"[A]n epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America's most defining eras--the Great Depression. Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with...