The purpose of this blog is to highlight the presence of the people of the African Diaspora in period costume dramas. It is also to provide a historical context to the films featured.
Patina Miller is playing Charlotte Jenkins an abolitionist.
From the PBS website: Charlotte Jenkins is a smart, capable, feisty former slave-turned-activist who comes to Alexandria to help the growing population of refugees newly escaped from bondage (also called “contrabands”) in making the transition to freedom. She soon finds out that they need far more than education. Most contrabands have little more than the rags on their backs and few prospects for employment. The Union Army, tasked with their welfare, does little more than provide basic rations, and those are sporadic at best. (A little-known part of Civil War history, contraband camps existed in a sort of refugee netherworld between free and enslaved, with nowhere to go, no food and no money. Many died of disease due to overcrowding and starvation before ever learning what true freedom meant.) As soon as Charlotte arrives in Alexandria, she sees the magnitude of the crisis, recognizing the onset of a smallpox epidemic in one of the contraband camps. She comes to Mansion House Hospital seeking assistance and support, only to be met with prejudice and a cold shoulder from the administration. Undeterred, Charlotte turns to Mary Phinney and Samuel Diggs (McKinley Belcher, III) for help. Together they embark on a mission to contain the epidemic. Her alliance with Samuel Diggs sparks a friendship that holds potential for something deeper.
Patina looks great as Charlotte Jenkins and the prospect of seeing how the series handles the contraband camps is exciting!
Daveed Diggs will take on the role of legendary abolitionist, Frederick Douglass in Showtime's upcoming limited series. The Blumhouse Television series is based on the National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird by James McBride.
Character Description: "Diggs will play Frederick Douglass, the well-known orator and leader of the abolitionist movement and Union Civil War effort. Douglass works with Brown and encourages the raid on Harpers Ferry, but finds Brown's planning and leadership style questionable and his approach dangerous, bordering on suicidal." The series will be told from the point of view of Onion (Joshua Johnson-Lionel), "a fictional enslaved boy, who is part of Brown’s motley crew of abolitionist soldiers during the time of Bleeding Kansas, eventually participating in the famous 1859 raid on the Army depot at Harpers Ferry. Brown’s raid failed to initiate the slave revolt he intended, but was the instigating event that started the Civil …
Sanditon (1817) is an unfinished novel by the English writer Jane Austen. In January 1817, Austen began work on a new novel but only completed eleven chapters before stopping work in mid-March 1817. Her illness most likely prevented her from continuing.
In the unfinished novel, Georgiana Lambe is described as “a young West Indian of large fortune, in delicate health,” who is “about seventeen, half mulatto, chilly and tender.” In the series, Georgiana is far wealthier than many of the white English people she interacts with, and her relationship to polite society is a big part of the plot.
Miss Georgiana is not a "race-bent" character or a modern insert. The Jane Austen wrote her as a woman of African ancestry. A wealthy West-Indian character included in a novel from the early 1800s. Austen's works are considered the pinnacle, so Miss Lambe's inclusion is noteworthy.
I fully agree with actress Crystal Clarke's sentiments:
"What's great is Georgiana …
Shondaland’s first Netflix project is based on Julia
Quinn’s best-selling Bridgerton novels.
Shot in the London the historical drama
is set in the lavish and highly competitive world of Regency London high
society. The Official Description: "From
the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair to the aristocratic palaces of Park Lane and
beyond, the series unveils a seductive, sumptuous world replete with intricate
rules and dramatic power struggles, where no one is truly ever on steady
ground. At the heart of the show is the powerful Bridgerton family. Comprised
of eight close-knit siblings, this funny, witty, daring and clever group must
navigate the upper ten thousand’s marriage mart in search of romance, adventure
and love." The CastThe Julie Andrews voices Lady
Whistledown, the unseen gossip writer. Rege-Jean Page (Roots 2016) as Simon Bassett A Duke who finds himself the
target of the town's single ladies. Phoebe Dynevor (Dickensian) as Daphne Bridgerton, the young debutante wa…
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