But even the longtime Harvard professor said he was blown away by the combined research that would result in the groundbreaking book and documentary The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. He said it was tantamount to reentering graduate school for him and what they discovered about our true history in this country knocked him off his feet.
Through the Many Rivers to Cross, readers will learn such shocking information as:
Gates said that it is false that the first black man to come to America was a slave:
“The most interesting fact that I found in my research was that the first black man to come to what is now the United States did not go to Jamestown, Virginia. We’ve been told in all the textbooks that the first black people were in Jamestown. That’s what we’ve been sold all of our lives.
“The first black person that came to U.S. did not go to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Turns out that black people had been coming to the United States since 1513; that’s the first thing. They went to Florida. And the first black man whose name we know was not even a slave. He was a pure black man African and he was a (Spanish) conquistador. He came with Ponce de Leon in search of the Fountain of Youth. Now, when I found that out, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Here was this brother walking around in suits of armor just like the other conquistadors. We found out that he got a pension from the king of Spain. He ended up in Mexico City where he had a series of very important jobs. And he’s been lost in history. Juan Girritor.”
The myth that Africans were not introduced to Christianity until they were transported to the Americas and the New World:
“24 percent of our ancestors who came from the slave trade from Angola, Kingdom of Angola. They were converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1400s. The African elites who sold them had converted them. There is the story that Africans didn’t become Christian until they landed here in America and that’s just not true.”
Even many of the darkest hued black men in America have mixed DNA:
“The DNA results that we did showed that 35 percent of all black men descended from a white man. That’s more than one out of three. That’s amazing. No one knew that we were as mixed as we are. Every black person in this country has white DNA flowing through their veins.”
The number of Africans transported to the United States pale in comparison to the number taken to South America, particularly Brazil:
“We now know 12.5 million Africans were shipped out as part of the Slave Trade. 15 percent died in the Middle Passage, 11 million were traded, but only 388,000 were shipped to U.S. 60,000 were dropped off in what is known as the Caribbean. Brazil got 5 million people alone.”
Black slaves tried mightily to get to the deepest part of the Deep South in order to become free men and women in the earlier part of American slavery:
“The slaves were keenly aware of each other’s civilizations. We are concerned to show is that what was happening to black civilization was not independent of what was happening in Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba and in Mexico. We know that because we know of the rebellion of 1739 and the slaves from Angola who were in South Carolina were trying to get 300 miles South into Florida, because if they cross the St. Mary’s River in Florida, the King of Spain said they would be free — as long as they pledged loyalty to the king, fight in the Spanish militia and join the Roman Catholic church. Well, most of us (scholars) did not know about this. And how did these slaves learn about this. And this shows that the black grapevine was alive and well even in the early years of slavery.”
Only three states got a grade of an “A” in teaching black history:
“The Southern Poverty Law Center graded the U.S. States on how they teach African American history. Only three states received an “A” — Alabama, Florida and New York. And only three states got a “B” — Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois. 35 states received an “F,” including California.”
