Gates’s quest isn’t ideological; one could call the documentary a kind of “Pilgrim’s Progress,” one in which the burdens are race and property. What becomes abundantly clear vis-à-vis Gates’s lyrical investigation is the innate genius it took for African-Americans to survive. In an early segment, our host interviews a food historian about sustenance: What did the slaves have to eat, and how did they cook it to not only feed themselves but in order to find joy in the scraps that were more or less thrown to them from their white oppressor’s welcome table? In a way, this segment is a microcosm of the program as a whole. But the tapestry-like richness of the series is interwoven with many stories, many ideas, and many realities; one cannot extract a single episode as being superior to another.

Gates uses archival footage and photographs prudently, and he doesn’t depend on images to tell his story. Rather, what we listen for is the steady calm of his questioning voice: our trusted guide illustrates how black skin became property, and how the subsequent attempt to dehumanize a people began with separating the family, and taking away their names. But what slave owners couldn’t rip off or silence was the collective African-American voice, the stories people told not only to survive but so they could be remembered. Gates’s magisterial series continues that tradition.