Shep Morgan

Moments Without Proper Names

Moments Without Proper Names makes Parks makes himself the subject, tracing his development as a person and an artist through an hourlong, non-narrative abstract self-portrait that combines Parks’s photographs with his musical compositions and scenes from his films. It also features footage of Parks, plus interpretations of his personal reminiscences performed by actors Avery Brooks, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Joe Seneca.

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."

Solomon Northup's Odyssey

This is based on a true story. Solomon Northrop is a black man in the mid 19th century before slavery was abolished. He's a born free man who works as a carpenter and is also a part time musician. One day he is approached by some men who want him to play for them. However, that is not their intention; they have kidnapped him and sold him into slavery. Now he has to endure the hardships that he has been spared because of his status as a free man. And his family who don't know what happened to him is searching for him but where do they go? And Solomon also wishes to let them know where he is so that they could get him but unfortunately no one believes his story or is willing to help him.

A House Divided: Denmark Vessey's Rebellion

Story of Denmark Vesey, who was raised as a slave but bought his freedom. He organized a plot to seize the city and free the black slaves, but this failed and he and others were hanged. Set in Charleston in 1822.