Emancipation

After being whipped nearly to death, an enslaved man named Peter escapes from a Louisiana plantation, outwitting cold-blooded hunters, as he makes his way North, where he joins the Union Army. The film is based on the true story of Gordon. Photographs of his bare back, heavily scourged from an overseer's whippings, were published worldwide in 1863, giving the abolitionist movement proof of the cruelty of American slavery.