Across Alabama's Black Belt on US Highway 80

Tour mansions where the slave owners who built them are glorified and follow with reverence the route of the Selma to Montgomery march which led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act in this 1999 documentary. The strip of black prairie land that crosses central Alabama is known as the Black Belt and Highway 80 crosses Alabama’s midsection through it. The Black Belt was the birthplace of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. The sights and sounds of the cities and towns contained within it offer a study of contrasts and a look into Alabama's painful past.