The Free Man's Line: Bell and Franklin Family

society, culture, history · EN

A Documentary History of the Manley Ray Bell Family There is a line that runs from the banks of the James River in 1517 to a football field in Edmonton, Canada, in 1975. It passes through paramount chiefs and English knights, through Cherokee diplomats who stood before King George II and Freedmen delegates who stood before the Chickasaw Nation. It passes through a woman whose name was never recorded and a man who chose his own. The Free Man's Line is a documentary-grade family history archive built around one man — Manley Ray "Bubba" Bell, born 1927 in Oklahoma — and the 185 documented ancestors who made him possible. Each episode moves through a chapter of the story: the Powhatan Confederacy, the Cherokee Overhill towns, the Chickasaw Freedmen rolls, and the all-Black towns of Oklahoma, where three brothers became the finest athletes the state had ever seen. This is not a simple family tree. It is a map of America. -- Website: