The Making of Slavery by Another Name

- [Doug] What happened in that period of time was so much more terrible than anything most Americans recognize or understand today.

- Slavery by Another Name's a twin cities, public television, TPT production, based on the book by a really celebrated journalist, Doug Blackmon.

This is a story that spans eight decades when Neo slavery, slavery by another name, forced labor, there are many terms that are used to describe this kind of involuntary labor that re-created some of the horrors of chattel slavery.

And this story spans that period.

(expressive music) We bring to this project all the years of experience producing historical documentaries.

This is the kind of project that TPT knows how to do and has a great track record in.

- Okay.

(inaudible) - One more.

(drill whirring) - We're in Centreville, Alabama filming some of the scenes that are gonna be in the 90 minute film.

This is a high quality documentary produced with exceptional filmmaking talent.

Sam Pollard is the producer director of the film.

His credentials are amazing.

He's worked with Spike Lee.

He's been a regular producer for American Masters, the series on PBS.

And Sam's great.

He's really assembled a terrific crew.

(country music) - And we're going to see his feet jump off and kind of disappear behind the next set of wheels.

Okay we're Rolling.

And three, two, one, jump.

- [Catherine] A real challenge for us on this project are period reenactments.

One of the things about Slavery by Another Name, the book, is that many of the characters described, there are no photographs for them.

And how do you make that come alive?

Sam has thought a lot about creating a look for this film that humanizes the experiences that so many African-Americans went through.

- [Film Crew] All right, you're good.

- [Man] Pass it up - [Producer] And roll camera.

We are rolling, rolling.

- [Doug] If they wanted a man convicted of any particular thing, then they simply had their own justice of the peace, declare someone to be guilty.

- Okay, cut.

- [Jason] Sam knows what he wants.

And I think it's just well thought out before he even comes to set and he actually lets other people, you know, give their opinions about what they think helps the shot or helps the actors.

So, yeah, he's very kind of laid back and I guess coming from an experienced editor, he already knows what he wants.

- Well, I'm trying to edit it in my mind, but you know, I keep looking at the scenes.

I look at the script.

I keep thinking hmm, I gotta figure out how to compress some of this stuff.

So it's a little bit of a challenge.

To be in costume.

I just try to do what I can to get the movie done.

You know, the thing about shooting another film is it's both exhilarating and tiring.

It's both fun and exhausting.

So it's been everything for me.

You know, and it's anytime you've got props and sets and actors, it's fun.

You know, then I go back to the regular documentary thing, which is the interviews.

- Often times in chains.

- [Catherine] Doug Blackmon, who's writer at large, a senior editor for the wall street journal.

He's been great to work with.

- When you do begin to engage with difficult history, unpredictable, but constructive things almost always happen.

Somewhat to my surprise.

After the book came out, people began to email me or call me, write me letters and say, I think I'm the great, great granddaughter, or I think I'm a cousin of that person.

One of the most touching for me of those people to emerge is a woman named Tanya Grooms.

- My mother had told us that your daddy's people are in this book and it won the Pulitzer.

- And we're like... - What?

What are you talking about?

And then we read this little excerpt.

I think that it's very fitting that we have found such a relative in our ancestry.

- [Narrator] Green would be arrested at the age of 23 and sent into the mines outside Birmingham.

- Oh yeah, there we are.

- Yeah, I finally met Green Cottenham - [Tonya] Ah, tell us about it.

(laughing) - Well, we were shooting the, you know, part of the documentary in Alabama, out of the group of actors who had been selected, then Sam Pollard told me to pick out Green Cottenham.

And then I suddenly realized, wow, you know, for 10 years now almost, - [Tonya] Yes, you've been - Looking for.

- [Tonya] Thinking about this person.

- [Doug] Yeah, and then I looked up and went, whoa, wait a minute.

That's Green Cottenham.

I finally met him.

- I think that what's really beautiful about this process is that now we celebrate the unknown, you know, maybe paying tribute to people who otherwise would have had no value, no one would know their story and no one would care.

- [Catherine] Well, Doug is, he's been great to work with and he's given us all kinds of really invaluable ideas, direction and endless enthusiasm.

- [Doug] The record of thousands upon thousands of people arrested in this way is everywhere in the south.

- [Sam] Well, what we're trying to do here is we're trying to sort of symbolically show the record rooms where a lot of this information was kept.

You know, so when we put it in the film where you get a sense of the volumes and volumes of material that was written about this whole period.

- These are land records.

It's like you just turn one page, Tennessee Coal Iron Railroad Company.

A company that's ultimately acquired by US Steel Corp.

It's the company that, that acquires Green Cottenham and thousands of other convicts and Cottenham dies in TCI mine.

- So you really see how mining was really such a big part of this state.

- It is everything.

- So we want to reveal in a dramatic way the evidence that really is the reason for this story.

You know, we're doing, trying to do a little Hollywood movie magic.

- [Doug] In the fall when it was time to pick cotton, huge numbers of black people are arrested in all of the cotton growing counties.

There are surges in arrests in counties in Alabama in the days before, coincidentally, a labor agent from the coal mines in Birmingham is coming to town that day to pick up whichever county convicts are there.

We're gonna just head up this little trail over here by the sign.

The patriarch of all the white Cottingham's was Elisha and he's buried right here.

Scipio was born in Africa and Elisha Cottingham bought him.

And so there were about a million slaves that were sold to down here, but over here, there's some stones that are out of place, but I think there's a good chance that these stones mark places where slaves were buried.

What we're talking about is an American family.

The story of their enslavement, the story of their liberation from enslavement, the arrest and the death of Green a hundred years ago.

And now, you know, we come back here with this group of wonderful, successful, productive American citizens who have recovered from all of that.

The forgiveness that African-Americans have shown.

Willingness to forgive and move on contrary to the cliche.

And here, you're looking at a family that is out here with such graciousness and all of this represents these in many ways, represents such terrible things.

It'd be totally legitimate for them to be angry, you know, at this.

And yet none of that, you know, there's none of that.

It's just an honest willingness to try to understand their own story.