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."

• Barry CraneDirector
• Samm-Art WilliamsWriter

• Mary AliceBlind Lily
• Ned BeattyRev. Mansfield French
• Carla BorelliLaura Towne
• Ariane BrandtEllen
• Ed DanilowiczCommissioner McKim
• Micki GrantLena
• Moses GunnHannibal
• Anna Maria HorsfordHannah
• Robert JacobSoldier in the Band
• Bruce McGillEdward Philbrick
• Melba MooreCharlotte Forten
• Jay PattersonEdward Pierce