Family Pictures USA

North Carolina

A Co-Production of Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, LLC & Independent Television Services. In Association with the Center for Asian American Media & Black Public Media. Presented by UNC-TV & WGCU.

With an economy founded on tobacco and textiles, North Carolina is a historically rural state that is changing rapidly. Through family photos, we learn how tobacco money transformed Durham from a sleepy small town into a prosperous city with a thriving African American middle class and a financial district known as “Black Wall Street.”

Outside of Burlington, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation have repurchased ancestral lands to serve as a legacy for their children and a cultural and educational gathering place for the tribe. Families long separated by race and class are finding healing through recognizing their kinship as black and white descendants from the same ancestors. And a sign of the new North Carolina is found in a church headed by a Korean American pastor whose mission is to help integrate the region’s latest immigrants into the community.