California Newsreel who applauded the approach said "While we applaud your effort to present African and African American history in a new and more favorable light, we think that your innovative techniques and broad scope are too radical for our largely academic market." The film is now a standard in most American universities.
One of the largest screenings in film history occurred when this movie was shown at the Million More Movement in Washington, D.C., on 15 October 2005.
Bill Cosby's infamous "Pound Cake speech" appears in the film as audio set to images.
The film features the poem "Somebody Blew-up America" by Amiri Baraka
The title of the film appears in Amharic (ge'ez) on the DVD cover and at the end of the film. Ge'ez is the last African script and is used in Ethiopia today.