America Beyond the Color... Episodes

Debut: Harvard humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (PBS's “Wonders of the African World”) surveys the state of black America in this four-part series. In Part 1 he assesses changes in the racial climate of “the new South” four decades after the civil-rights movement began. Much pleases him as he visits with content Mississippi resident Morgan Freeman Jr.; the black mayor and police chief of Memphis; an interracial Birmingham couple; and a white colonel at Fort Benning, Ga., who extols “the colorblind” Army. But the more Gates digs, the more problems he finds---from the pessimistic white pastor of a struggling interracial church in Birmingham to a black couple in a pricey Atlanta suburb who have it all---except for white neighbors.