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."
Mary Alice
as Blind Lily
Ned Beatty
as Rev. Mansfield French
Carla Borelli
as Laura Towne
Ariane Brandt
as Ellen
Ed Danilowicz
as Commissioner McKim
Micki Grant
as Lena
Moses Gunn
as Hannibal
Anna Maria Horsford
as Hannah
Robert Jacob
as Soldier in the Band
Bruce McGill
as Edward Philbrick
Melba Moore
as Charlotte Forten
Jay Patterson
as Edward Pierce
