Narrated by Morgan Freeman, SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA presents American slavery as evolving from a loosely defined labor system in which Africans and later African Americans could take matters to court and own property, into the tightly regulated enslavement of individuals based solely on race. The series underscores the integral role slavery played in the growth of this country's Southern and Northern states; the fact that slaves were not a monolithic group but rather, individuals who came from many different cultures and were empowered by their backgrounds to navigate the environment into which they were thrust; and that they sought freedom in many ways, from joining the ranks of the British during the American Revolution to running off to Canada or joining rebel communities.

EPISODE ONE "The Downward Spiral" Episode One covers the period from 1619 through 1739 and spotlights the origins of slavery in America, focusing on Dutch New Amsterdam (later New York City). This program shows how slavery in its early days was a loosely defined labor source similar to indentured servitude, in which Africans and others of mixed race and/or mixed culture had some legal rights, could take their masters to court and could even earn wages as they undertook the backbreaking labor involved in building a new nation - clearing land, constructing roads, unloading ships. The first hour culminates with the bloody Stono rebellion in South Carolina, which led to the passage of "black codes," regulating virtually every aspect of slaves' lives.

EPISODE TWO "Liberty in the Air" Spanning from the 1740s through the 1830s, the series' second hour explores the continued expansion of slavery in the colonies, the evolution of a distinct African American culture and the roots of the emancipation movement. The episode reveals the many ways the enslaved resisted their oppression, their role on both sides of the Revolutionary War and the strength and inspiration many of them found in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, despite the inherent contradictions that lay in what those documents expressed and what this country practiced.

EPISODE THREE "Seeds of Destruction" The film's third hour looks at the period from 1800 through the start of the Civil War, during which slavery saw an enormous expansion and entered its final decades. As the nation expanded west, the question of slavery became the overriding political issue of the time. These years saw an increasingly militant abolitionist movement and a widening rift between the North (which had largely outlawed slavery but continued to reap the vast economic benefits of the system) and the South, now home to millions of enslaved black men, women and children. By 1860, every attempt at striking an agreement (the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, a draconian federal fugitive slave law ) had failed, splitting apart the Union.

EPISODE FOUR "The Challenge of Freedom" The series' fourth episode follows the life of Robert Smalls as it takes viewers through the Civil War, the Reconstruction and beyond. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves under the control of the Confederate government. In 1865, with the South defeated, the nation adopted the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (respectively ending slavery, declaring all African Americans citizens and granting all African American males the right to vote). With Smalls as framework, this final installment looks at the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and militant opposition to black rights, the end of the Reconstruction and its replacement with a whole new kind of legalized oppression.