Instill respect for teachers.

It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.

The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the 20 who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. All of us had been taught that. The first African came to Florida in 1513. And the huge shock is we know his name, Juan Garrido, and that he wasn't a slave. He was free!

Precisely that, covering 500 years of African-American history in six hours. I've been working on this for seven years. The biggest challenge was deciding which stories to tell.

Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.