Loyalties

This documentary is the story of two women whose meeting brought together two halves of a whole story: that of slave owner and slave. Dr. Ruth Whitehead met graduate student Carmelita Robertson in 1995 when the younger woman came to do research at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax. Carmelita casually mentioned that her relatives had come to Nova Scotia from South Carolina as Black Loyalists in the late 1700s. As she recited the names of her ancestors, Ruth shuddered at the strange familiarity. She had come from South Carolina too. Ruth and Carmelita embark on a journey to Charleston in search of their connection, an undertaking that takes them to a modern South where the Klan is on trial for burning black churches. Beneath the dense foliage of the plantations, in the sweltering heat of white patronage and black forbearance, the two women come to terms with the thunderous cruelty of the past.