Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery

The Terrible Transformation, the first chapter in the tragic story of slavery in America. The series' premiere program challenges popular misconceptions about the origins of slavery in America. Racial slavery did not arrive full-blown with the first Africans to set foot on Virginia soil in the early seventeenth century. It evolved over several decades, one law at a time, to become the institution with which we are now most familiar. "Slavery and freedom existed side by side in this country," says Cornell University historian Margaret Washington. "The issue is: Did it always have to be that way? And the early history of America indicates that it probably did not."

Revolution, examines how the colonies' struggle for sovereignty called into question the institution of American slavery. The film tells the story of the paradox at the heart of the nation's creation through the lives of two individuals: a fourth generation Virginian named George Washington, and an African captured and brought to America as a slave, named Venture Smith. Revolution shows the two men struggling in very different ways to become American.

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."

Judgment Day, focuses on the final years before the Civil War and the eventual, bloody end to the institution of slavery. As the nation expanded westward and thousands of slaves from the South were marched into the new territories, American citizens were forced to decide whether the nation would be slave or free. Judgment Day examines how abolitionists struggled for an American future built on freedom for all. Says historian Eric Foner of Columbia University, "Can we exist as a multi-racial society? Can this be a society of equality between people of different backgrounds, different colors, different races? Those questions are still not really answered."