North Carolina
With an economy founded on tobacco and textiles, “North Carolina” is a historically rural state that is changing rapidly.Through family photos, we learn how tobacco money transformed Durham from a sleepy small town into a prosperous city with a thriving African American middle class and a financial district known as “Black Wall Street.” Outside of Burlington, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation have repurchased ancestral lands to serve as a legacy for their children and a cultural and educational gathering place for the tribe. Families long separated by race and class are finding healing through recognizing their kinship as black and white descendants from the same ancestors. And a sign of the new North Carolina is found in a church headed by a Korean American pastor whose mission is to help integrate the region’s latest immigrants into the community.
Detroit
In America’s comeback city, “Detroit” the series introduces descendants of both Native Americans and slaves whose ancestors helped build the city. Thomas visits the oldest hat store in the U.S. and learns about a border wall paid for by the U.S. government that was constructed to separate black and white neighborhoods. One of America’s most prosperous cities in 1960, Detroit’s rise and fall and rise again is revealed through personal photos and stories of the city’s proud inhabitants.
The enormous influence of the auto industry, the rise of labor unions, cultural touchstones like the Motown sound, the devastating impacts of the 1967 riots and the city’s renaissance today are all explored via family narratives and memories, expanding our understanding of Detroit and its multilayered story.
Southwest Florida
The series also visits Fort Myers and the Paradise Coast of “Southwest Florida” a tropical region that stretches from Caloosahatchee River to the Everglades, where Native Americans, cattle ranchers, members of fishing communities and restaurateurs recount their family stories with pride. In rural Immokalee, we learn that Florida is still cattle country and meet former migrant workers who now own companies that harvest produce. Descendants of Seminole leader Osceola preserve their tribal way of life and pass down centuries-old traditions to their children. Here too, An African American family confronts the divisions of the past and moves forward as they uncover the story of their pioneering, bi-racial ancestor, and meet their white relatives. And in a surprise twist, a couple who successfully saved Estero Bay and formed the state’s first aquatic preserve meet the woman whose father tried to develop it.
