Dr. Henry Louis Gates brings our hidden history to life like we’ve never seen before in Great Migrations: A People On The Move, a new series premiering Jan. 28 that reveals how Black Americans’ search for a better life changed the U.S. forever. If you think you’ve seen and heard it all before, you have no idea how much more there is to the story.
Source: McGee Media / PBS
What does it mean when you think of home? For many Black Americans, the answer is complicated. Fortunately, it doesn’t take an appearance on Finding Your Roots for the Emmy-nominated series’ host and executive producer Dr. Gates to help uncover the people and the past that still shape our politcs, cultures, and communities.
From the hope of a “promised land” in the North after Emancipation to Black immigrants searching for and reimagining the “American Dream,” these four episodes capture the hopeful and harrowing stories of Black people fleeing inequality, finding home, and forging new identities over more than a century.
BOSSIP Talks To The Directors/Producers About Bringing The Hidden Histories Of Great Migrations To Life
In an exclusive interview, BOSSIP sat down with series directors/producers Julia Marchesi and Nailah Ife Sims to discuss what it took to create Great Migrations: A People On The Move and what viewers can expect starting Tuesday, Jan. 28 at 9 pm ET.
Source: McGee Media / PBS
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Marchesi, who previously worked on 2019’s Reconstruction: America After the Civil War and 2022’s Emmy-nominated Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches with Dr. Gates (or Skip), explained what it was like to collaborate again on Great Migrations and how this series is different.
MARCHESI: I’ve worked with Skip Gates for about 20 years. Reconstruction was the biggest, but we also did Frederick Douglass for HBO, and a Finding Your Roots episode with John Lewis and Corey Booker. All this work has been like getting a PhD in, not just Black history, but American history.
This project bridged a gap in my knowledge of Black history about everything between the periods of Reconstruction and Civil Rights and that’s how I approached Great Migrations.
Source: McGee Media / PBS
Sims describes how Great Migrations hit close to home with her own family history. She also shared what made this project different from her previous documentaries like 2021’s Who Killed Malcolm X? and 2022’s Black Patriots: Heroes Of The Civil War.
SIMS: It was really special to be able to work on a series that touches on my own family history. I am the proud descendant of participants in the Great Migration from Arkansas and Mississippi to Chicago. On my mother’s side, I’m the descendant of Haitian migrants to the U.S. who also settled in Chicago. So I’ve always known the story of migration through a personal level, but it was really special to work on something that contextualizes those personal histories within the larger American history. I was really excited to learn more about how consequential those migrations were to American culture and society.
In terms of my other work, I’ve worked on histories that are piecemeal along the timeline of American history from the 19th century to the mid-20th century, so this connected a lot of dots for me.
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