MAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE premieres October 4 on PBS

MAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE premieres October 4, 2022 on PBS at AT 9/8C.

MAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE is a four-part series from executive producer, host and writer Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., which will premiere October 4th on PBS stations nationwide. Professor Gates, with directors Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris, chronicle the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” The series recounts the establishment of the Prince Hall Masons in 1775 through the formation of all-Black towns and business districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, destinations for leisure and the social media phenomenon of Black Twitter. Professor Gates sits with noted scholars, politicians, cultural leaders and old friends to discuss this world behind the color line and what it looks like today. MAKING BLACK AMERICA takes viewers into an extraordinary world that showcased Black people’s ability to collectively prosper, defy white supremacy and define Blackness in ways that transformed America itself.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr and Oxford to publish African American Dictionary

The Oxford University Press has planned to publish in 2025 a dictionary that will reflect the history, significance and meaning of African-American language.

The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, a new glossary of language that will contain popular phrases used by historical Black figures and modern-day Black Americans.

Historian, Henry Louis Gates Jr is the editor-in-chief of the proposed dictionary which will be produced from a three-year research project by Oxford English Dictionary and Havard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research.

According to Gates on the project, “Every speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by African-Americans, whether they know it or not,” Gates said.

The project was a joint venture of the Oxford University Press and the Hutchins Center. Gates Jr. said that the idea for the new dictionary came about when the Oxford Press asked him to collaborate on their existing dictionaries, leading him to propose a more ambitious project.

Funded by grants from the Mellon and Wagner Foundations, the dictionary stems from a three-year research project led by a diverse team of researchers and lexicographers whose focus is to preserve the vocabulary of African-Americans. The new dictionary, which Gates said is heavily influenced by “words invented by African Americans,” will serve as an authoritative record of African-American English.

The first copy of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English is expected to be released in 2025.