Premieres Monday, June 29, 2026 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream with KPBS+
"Declarations: Black Americans and The Revolutionary War" is part of PBS America @ 250, a multiyear celebration of U.S. history, culture, and children’s programming, which began in spring 2025 and continues through America’s Semiquincentennial in 2026 and beyond.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago, the Founders – many of whom were slaveholders – declared: “all men are created equal.” As their aspirational words and ideals of freedom were signed into existence and spread throughout the colonies, Black people recognized that these ideas included them.
The film examines how they fought for these tenets of democracy for themselves, their families, and their communities. The film features insights from historians and scholars including Leslie Alexander, Danielle Allen, Edward Ayers, Christopher L. Brown, Woody Holton, and others.
“This film is an opportunity to bring to light more hidden figures in history — stories that are important to the building of this nation,” said director Stacey Holman. “There is so much we can learn about agency, endurance and most importantly hope, that viewers can apply to their lives today. Anytime we can connect history with the present, it reveals so much about the human condition and how to navigate the world.”
"Declarations" follows the stories of four Black Americans as they navigate our country’s fight for independence and their individual pursuits of freedom. Discover the stories of James Lafayette, who served as a double agent for the Patriots and helped bring down the British at Yorktown; Harry Washington, who was enslaved by George Washington and escaped Mount Vernon to join the British troops; Elizabeth Freeman, previously known as Mum Bet, who sued one of the most prominent patriots in Massachusetts while living under his roof; and Abraham Peyton Skipwith, an enslaved man who used his proximity to power and his unusual literacy to petition for his own freedom and become one of the first free Black landowners in Richmond, Virginia.
“The 250th anniversary of the United States has presented us with an amazing opportunity to immortalize these previously unacknowledged founding figures who didn’t just fight for their country, but for their freedom,” said Steve Humble, Executive Producer and Chief Content Officer at VPM. “By piecing together their important contributions with fragments of documents and records, this film shines a light on the remarkable lives of these brave Americans who fought in the courts, fought for both sides on the battlefield, and fought through the radical act of living as free Black people in the earliest days of our nation.”
With limited historical representations available, the film brings these lesser-known figures to life visually through the talent of artist and archival producer, Hudson Campbell. Continuing a long legacy of artists reclaiming and reshaping black narratives, Campbell created each oil-based portrait by hand. In consultation with historic advisors, these portraits were then animated with artificial intelligence tools, helping to supplement historical depictions and giving agency to these subjects on visual terms.
“My work examines how the past informs the future, exploring the evolution of both the stories being told and the mediums used to tell them,” said Campbell. “Drawing from my background in archival producing, I use research to translate the profound experiences of historical figures and the environment they inhabited into visual manifestations. By integrating generative AI into this process, I bridge the centuries-wide disconnect between these figures and modern viewers, breathing dimension into the past and making history intimately relatable.”
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Credits: Produced by VPM, Virginia’s Home for Public Media, in association with PBS. Directed by Stacey L. Holman. Executive producers are Steve Humble and Mason Mills. Stacey L. Holman and Maya Tepler are writers and producers. Margaret Ebrahim is the Executive in Charge for PBS.
