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
