
At the beginning of the Civil War, Union gunboats sailed into Port Royal Sound, on the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia. White plantation owners fled, and the 10,000 blacks who lived there, almost all of whom were slaves, were freed in the first test of President Abraham Lincoln's dream of emancipation. Charlotte Forten, a 21-year-old educated black woman, helped the freed slaves to begin to build a new society. That experience forms the plot of this drama, based on Charlotte Forten's journals, which was telecast on "American Playhouse."

as Blind Lily

as Rev. Mansfield French

as Laura Towne

as Ellen

as Commissioner McKim

as Lena

as Hannibal

as Hannah

as Soldier in the Band

as Edward Philbrick

as Charlotte Forten

as Edward Pierce

as Col. Thomas Higginson

as Mrs. Lawrence

as Joshua

as Sgt. Rivas

as Jacob

as Slave / Ring Shout Dancer