Slavery and the Making of America (2005)

SERIES

20051 Season55m episodes7.7

Documentary

TMDB7.7

Votes5

Your rating

Runtime: 55m episodes
Genre: Documentary
Certificate: TV-PG
Origin: US

About

The history of American slavery from its beginnings in the British colonies to its end in the Southern states and the years of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Looks at slavery as an integral part of a developing nation, challenging the long held notion that slavery was exclusively a Southern enterprise. Simultaneously focuses on the remarkable stories of individual slaves, offering new perspectives on the slave experience and testifying to the active role that Africans and African Americans took in surviving their bondage and shaping their own lives.

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Region

Free

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Availability from JustWatch via TMDB.

Details

Status: Ended
First aired: Feb 9, 2005
Network: PBS
Studio: Thirteen

Time to finish

4 hrs

4 episodes. About 1 week at an hour a night.

View on IMDb ↗

Cast

Morgan Freeman

Self - Narrator (voice)

Chauncey Herring

Reenactor

Justin Jackson

Reenactor

Larry Floyd

Reenactor

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SERIES

20051 Season55m episodes7.7

Documentary

TMDB7.7

Votes5

Your rating

Runtime: 55m episodes
Genre: Documentary
Certificate: TV-PG
Origin: US

About

Where to watch

Region

Free

Buy

Availability from JustWatch via TMDB.

Episodes

0 of 0 watched

E1 · Airs Feb 9, 2005 · 55m · ★ 3.2
The Downward Spiral
The 1620s. Eleven men of African descent and mixed ethnicity enter into slavery in New Amsterdam. Working side by side with white indentured servants, these men labored to lay the foundations of the Dutch colony that would later become New York. No law then defined the limitations imposed on slaves. Anthony d'Angola, Emmanuel Driggus, and Frances Driggus could bring suits to court, earn wages, and marry. After the 1731 Stono Rebellion, many colonies adopted strict "black codes" transforming the social system into one of legal racial oppression.
E2 · Airs Feb 9, 2005 · 55m · ★ 6.0
Liberty in the Air
The 1740s to the 1830s. As the slave population reproduces, American planters become less dependent on the African slave trade. Ensuing generations of slaves develop a unique culture that blends elements of African and American life. African Americans, including Thomas Jefferson's slave Jupiter, Colonel Tye, Elizabeth Freeman, David Walker, and Maria Stewart, respond to the increasingly restrictive system of slavery. The Revolutionary War reveals the contradictions of a nation seeking independence while simultaneously denying freedom to its black citizens.
E3 · Airs Feb 16, 2005 · 55m · ★ 6.0
Seeds of Destruction
1800. Vermont leads the Northern states in abolishing and phasing out slavery, while the South begins its greatest expansion. As the nation develops westward and cotton replaces tobacco as its most valuable crop, slavery is increasingly divisive. African American slaves Harriet Jacobs and Louis Hughes escape bondage to expose the horrific realities of the slave experience in autobiographical narratives. These and other stories of physical, psychological, and sexual exploitation reinvigorate the Northern abolitionist movement led by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Amy Post.
E4 · Airs Feb 16, 2005 · 55m · ★ 6.0
The Challenge of Freedoms
Civil War and Reconstruction. The war shifts from a struggle for union to a battle over slavery. Blacks, such as South Carolina slave and future congressman Robert Smalls, contribute to the war effort and experience gains and losses from Reconstruction. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments abolish slavery and guarantee black civil rights, and the Freedmen's Bureau offers aid to former slaves throughout the 1870s. But militant groups such as the Ku Klux Klan threaten the future of racial equality, and segregation laws begin appearing across the country. Slavery's eradication does not end black oppression.

Details

Status: Ended
First aired: Feb 9, 2005
Network: PBS
Studio: Thirteen

Time to finish

4 hrs

4 episodes. About 1 week at an hour a night.

View on IMDb ↗

Cast

Morgan Freeman

Self - Narrator (voice)

Chauncey Herring

Reenactor

Justin Jackson

Reenactor

Larry Floyd

Reenactor

Similar

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20208.7

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20267.0

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2021

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20235.0

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20261.0

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2019

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19907.9

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19977.5

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20188.0

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2026

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2024

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2018

Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery

19988.6

Exterminate All the Brutes

20217.4

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War

20197.0

Finding Britain’s Slave Traders with David Olusoga

20261.0

Empire with David Olusoga

20254.7

The Book of Negroes

20156.6

Monochrome: Black, White & Blue

2017

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