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starring: Alfre Woodard
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780767016797
Format: Color, NTSC
ISBN: 0767016793
Label: A&E Home Video
Manufacturer: A&E Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: A&E Home Video
Release Date: April 27, 1999
Running Time: 95 minutes
Sales Rank: 5486
Studio: A&E Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1999
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Editorial Review:
Description:
So many slaves escaped into freedom along a route that could not be ascertained that the slave owners said there must be an underground railroad under the Ohio River and on to the North.' Abolitionist William Cockrum, 1854. Join descendants and scholars as we tell the story of America's first civil rights movement.
Amazon.com:
No records were kept, but historians believe more than 100,000 slaves tried to escape their bondage before the Emancipation Proclamation. Most of those who made it to the relative safety of the north--or the wilderness, when slavery still reigned in the north--had help in the form of the Underground Railroad. Whites, free blacks, and Native Americans offered aid and shelter, though the notion of the Railroad as a kind of conspiracy of freedom, organized from north to south, is deeply flawed. Alfre Woodard links together interviews with historians, contemporary photographs, drawings, and dramatic reenactments to show the terrors of slavery and the travails of escape, exploding many of our myths along the way. The economic and political motivations behind many white abolitionists' feelings are explored, and while ultimately it didn't matter to a slave reaching out for liberty why it was offered, we are forced to reevaluate the selfless image of many 'conductors.' Still, freedom is freedom, and the History Channel's Underground Railroad tells its story well, inspiring respect for the generations of men and women who fought silently for it. --Rob Lightner
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - "Follow The Drinking Gourd"
One of the most general perceptions that I received from my high school history days in the 1960's concerning the fate of black slaves in America was that they essentially passively waited for the Union armies to free them during the process of the Civil War in the 1860's. In short, blacks had no pre-history as a people who struggled for freedom in their own right but were merely the victims of history. Of course, since those days I have made it my business to find out the real story of slave resistance ... Read More
Rating: - Interesting History
I find this type if DVD interesting. I love history and digging for facts and found this just up my alley! I enjoy finding out facts that I just didn't know before and I know I will watch this over and over again.
Rating: - a fantastic collection of stories
This DVD was essentially a collection of stories about the underground railroad. They include most, if not all of the well known railroad "conductors". There was not a whole lot of dramatization, but the stories and the visuals throughout the stories were good enough to keep me occupied and interested throughout.
Stories that they tell include some of the more well known one's, like "boxcar Brown" and they also told some stories that I had not heard (despite going over this period of history 4 times ... Read More
Rating:  - Important history which everyone should know.
I'm not black, but nevertheless, I would like to see this story which is about a shameful part of American history, about human beings, people who suffered gross mistreatment at the hands of white people,and who had the courage to risk their lives in their race to freedom. They are to be greatly admired. I have not seen or ordered this DVD, much as I'd like to, because it offers no sub-titles, which I need in order to get every word of the dialogue.
DVD producers should wake up and smell the ... Read More
Rating: - fine documentary of the first civil rights movement
The History Channel's documentary on the Underground Railroad remains one of the definitive television documentaries of this very early civil rights movement. After quickly establishing that the Underground Railroad was certainly not a railroad train that literally ran underground, we see that the Underground Railroad was in fact a hodge-podge, "make it up as you go along" way of escaping slavery in the southern United States to freedom in the northern United States.
The documentary gives us great ... Read More
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