Arts: The Abolitionists Is Surprisingly Good

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Brow Beat The Abolitionists Is Surprisingly Good By June Thomas Posted Tuesday, Jan 08, 2013, at 03:15 PM ET The Abolitionists, which begins tonight on PBS, manages to pull off several unlikely feats. For starters, it turns stories that will be familiar to many of the people who watch PBS documentary series—the lives of five major historical figures—into gripping narratives. The writer and producer and director, Rob Rapley, uses that riskiest of documentary techniques, the live re-enactment. And those sequences have to overcome another obstacle: the presence of familiar TV actors. Finally, the series  has a surprising—and seemingly uncinematic—focus: the inevitable loneliness of the activist's life. In recounting the lives of John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Angelina Grimké, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the narration repeatedly notes how isolating it can be to speak truth to power. Grimké is compelled to leave her slave-holding family when she realizes that, unlike her, they are blind to the moral offense of slavery. Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, is said to have had "few friends or allies." Brown is so sure that 22 men can spark a mass movement that he launches a suicidal rebellion. And Stowe writes Uncle Tom's Cabin when the loss of her son Charlie to typhus makes her "understand the pain of mothers she would never know"—the slave mothers sold away from their own children. The story of Douglass, the only African-American figure profiled in the series, is slightly different—after seeing his extraordinary ability to connect with an audience, activists like Garrison encourage Douglass to tour the country testifying ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate It's Time To Stop Obsessing About the Dangers of Genetic Information Economists Use Shoddy Data Mr. Schmidt Goes to Pyongyang	Advertisement
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