Charlotte Forten's Mission: Experiment in Freedom

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."

Cast

Mary Alice

Blind Lily

Ned Beatty

Rev. Mansfield French

Carla Borelli

Laura Towne

Ariane Brandt

Ellen

Ed Danilowicz

Commissioner McKim

Micki Grant

Lena

Moses Gunn

Hannibal

Anna Maria Horsford

Hannah

Robert Jacob

Soldier in the Band

Bruce McGill

Edward Philbrick