PBS39 Celebrates Black History Month Tonight

WLVT-TV, PBS-39, will celebrate Black History Month at 6:30 p.m. tonight by hosting a pre-screening of a new documentary about how thousands of African Americans were put into forced labor in the decades that followed the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War.

Slavery by Another Name challenges the assumption that slavery ended in the South in 1865. The documentary is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name written by Douglas A. Blacmon, a senior writer for the Wall Street Journal.

The screening will feature 18 minutes of highlights from the film and will be followed with a panel discussion with experts from , and .

The event, which is co-sponsored by the station, Lehigh University and the will take place at the new PBS39 Public Media and Education Center at SteelStacks.

The event is free and open to the public, though reservations are encouraged. Please RSVP to Jessie Heimann, PBS39 Creative Services, at jessieh@wlvt.org or 610.867.4677 x357.

The full documentary, which is narrated by actor Laurence Fishburne, will air at 10 p.m. Monday on PBS-39.

The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters.

The practice continued well into the 20th Century.