True stories and traditional songs shed light on a lesser known era in African-American history - the crucial decades between Emancipation and the start of the Civil Rights movement.In the dark of night, a mother risks her life to search for her four children, stolen by her former master. A wife refuses to hand her husband over to an angry white-hooded mob, despite the wailing of her babies - and the foot stomping on her pregnant belly. A woman calmly takes her seat in a first-class coach and is ordered to leave: "I’m a lady. All ladies sit here," argues journalist Ida B. Wells before she is carried from the car, seat and all. These are some of the vignettes presented in FREE AT LAST!, interwoven with spirituals, work songs, blues lyrics, poems, and a compelling narrative recounting the experience of black Americans in the South from the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 through the dawn of the Civil Rights era in 1954.
