In the Dominican Republic, Professor Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of inter-marriage, and how the country’s troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. In Haiti, Professor Gates tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves’s hard fight for liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire became a double-edged sword.

**Thank you to those people who have pointed out that the film opens with a guaguancó, rather than merengue, and many apologies for this error. The producers commissioned several merengue pieces from Grupo Bonyé and were assured that they were of this genre. The online version has been updated and this corrected version will be used for subsequent television broadcasts of the series.