Written and produced by David Freudberg, this one-hour documentary examines how America responded to the needs for shelter, employment, education and the basic rights of four million newly emancipated slaves at the close of the Civil War. Hear historians, brief readings from letters of people who were there, performances of "Negro Spirituals" and more.
SEGMENT 1: In Black History Month, we examine a fascinating chapter of American history: a federal agency known as Freedmen’s Bureau, which helped hundreds of thousands of emancipated slave’s transition to a life of freedom after the Civil War.
SEGMENT 2: Historians David Blight of Yale University, Edna Green Medford of Howard University, and Abigail Cooper of Brandeis University recreate the fascinating and fraught conditions of Reconstruction as America struggled to define what citizenship means.