At first glance Brazil appears to be an alluring playground of exciting carnivals, sultry samba, divine football and a vibrantly diverse people. But behind this dazzling facade lies a disturbing story of historys largest-ever slave population. Astonishingly Brazil, a Portuguese colony, received ten-times more African slaves than the numbers transported to North America. This programme looks at those estimated 4 million people with whose blood, sweat...

A compilation, selected from various sources and arranged chronologically, of the reminiscences of slaves and ex-slaves about their experiences from the leaving of Africa through the Civil War and into the early twentieth century.

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup is a memoir of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped, sold into slavery and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before the American Civil War. He provided details of slave markets in Washington, DC, as well as describing at length cotton cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a powerful and groundbreaking novel that played a pivotal role in shaping American history. Published in 1852, the book provides a stark depiction of the brutal realities of slavery in the United States. The story revolves around the life of Uncle Tom, an enduring and compassionate African American slave, and the various characters he encounters through his life of servitude. Stowe's narrative vividly...

Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which...

In Traces of the trade: a story from the deep north, one family's painful but persistent confrontation with the continuing legacy of the slave trade becomes America's. Katrina Browne uncovers her New England family's deep involvement in the Triangle Trade and, in so doing, reveals the pivotal role slavery played in the growth of the whole American economy. This courageous documentary asks every American what we can and should do to repair the unacknowledged...

After the Civil War ends, Addy desperately hopes that her family will be reunited in freedom in Philadelphia, but the futre may hold both happiness and heartache.

Trying to shape a new life of freedom in Philadelphia after having been a slave, Addy finds inspiration from a new friend.

"Mende Nazer lost her childhood. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village on horseback. The raiders set fire to the village huts. They murdered the adults by slitting their throats with knives. They rounded up thirty-one young children. Mende was twelve." "A slave trader brought Mende to Sudan's capital city, Khartoum, and sold her to a wealthy Arab family. So began Mende's dark years of enslavement....

A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially...