This Far by Faith: African-American Spiritual Journeys
Season 1
Created by: Henry E. Hampton
Network: PBS
Season aired: 2003-02-02
Overview
Celebrate the triumph of the African-American religious experience through the last three centuries. From the arrival of the early African slaves through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Era, and into the 21st Century, explore the epic struggle of a people whose faith was continually tested, and how that faith became a force for social change that helped transform America socially, politically and culturally.
About This Season
The project demonstrated how men and women of color have been forced -- arguably more so than any other ethnic group in the U.S. to rise above their circumstances to flourish and prevail, guided by their unshakeable faith in a divine power (either one borne of their own African religions or one instilled in them by white society).
Episodes · 6
There Is a River
Explore the evolution of African-American religious thought, from the beliefs and rituals Africans brought to America to the influence of Christian teachings imposed on slaves in the new world.
God Is a Negro
After Emancipation, the minister and journalist Henry McNeal Turner uses the black church to engage newly freed blacks in the political realm.
Guide My Feet
Trace African-Americans as they move from the rural South to the promised land of the industrial North.
Freedom Faith
Faith sustained black families through the oppression of segregation in the 1940s and 1950s.
Inheritors of the Faith
Follow those who seek spiritual fulfillment outside of Christianity. It explores Islam and Yoruba.
Rise Up and Call Their Names
In 1998, 60 people embarked on an Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage.
