Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery

Brotherly Love (1x3)

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Brotherly Love, examines the first forty years of the new nation through events in the capital of Philadelphia. There the promise of liberty became real for some of the city's citizens and fleeting for others. As the nation moved to solidify its commitment to slavery, free and enslaved black Americans inspired by the principles of the American Revolution began organizing--building churches, forming improvement societies, and petitioning the government for the repeal of slave laws. "Blacks claim out of the American Revolution their own kind of a Declaration of Independence," says David Blight, historian at Amherst College. "They refuse to let America say that the Declaration of Independence only applies to white people. It's clear that they saw themselves as vessels of the legacy of this revolution."