Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness Premiering Tonight on Independent Lens on PBS

“Herskovits ‘was one of the most important people you’ve never heard of… But when it comes to the topic of African-American cultural history, he’s at the center of the debate.’”
- The Jewish Week

Who has the authority to define your identity? Considered one of the most controversial scholars of our time, Melville Herskovits — a Jewish anthropologist — challenged the norm in the 1940s when he wrote that black culture wasn’t pathological, it was African. Leading a seismic shift in the way African American culture is understood, Herskovits’s work raises ideas that still challenge us today.