Set against the backdrop of America’s founding, “Becoming American: Philadelphia’s Story”, explores the lives of the city's racially diverse people, and especially the influence of the free black community.
“Becoming American” is a story about the birth of our nation. The proud tale of how 56 men from 13 colonies told their British landlords that enough was enough, and they were ready to stand on their own two feet. Philadelphia was the backdrop for the conversations, debates, and the drawing up of documents that would shape our country’s founding, but this is a shared history that resonates from East to West, North to South, in places that had not even been dreamt of in 1776. The semiquincentennial belongs to all Americans.
Our film begins with the founding of the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania, and the interactions that were taking place within a diverse population - European colonists, Native Americans, a small but influential free Black community, and the newly introduced enslaved Africans. Some came to the city because it promised safety and sanctuary, some had been here for thousands of years, and some were trafficked here across oceans, against their will. What they had in common was their use of resilience, intellect and hard work in the founding of a new nation, a sense of purpose that is crucial to understanding what the United States of America is today.
Philadelphia was the de-facto capital city at this point in American history, and The Founding Fathers, a group of people whose names resonate with most Americans, were at work in the city, shaping the future of the new nation. The city is home to the nation’s most important historic institutions, where ideas of abolition and emancipation were wrestled with, and where patriotism was born, during the Revolutionary War and beyond. These ideals and debates still carry significance today, across America.
We focus on the lesser known stories of individuals, whose dreams and challenges we explore at the ground level. The lawmakers, dressmakers and sailmakers whose toil in the face of adversity shaped the new country in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. We look at the growth of communities and societies, and how Philadelphia became a model for the expansion of the nation. These human stories are a microcosm of the search for identity that was happening across the new country at this time.
We also look at the bigger picture: the fledgling nation’s relationship with global powerhouse France, and her trading relationship with San Domingue (now Haiti) had implications for the whole Eastern Seaboard, especially when the “slave revolt” on the island took center stage.
The Haitian Revolution, where the once enslaved became the leaders of a nation, led to Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, as Napoleon abandoned his colony. An uprising that should have galvanised the rights for black people across the North Atlantic, instead led to the doubling of slave numbers in America, and an ungovernable expansion of the nation, which would ultimately end in Civil War.
“Becoming American” will educate and inform anyone who is interested in how our great nation came to rise, how it grew and was perceived by outsiders and by its own people, how communities lived, worked and loved in the tumultuous Founding Era.
Yes, it’s a film about Philadelphia, but the story of Philadelphia during this period is a story about the whole of America.