In 1781, a formerly enslaved woman and a free-born Black writer begin a journey through post-Revolutionary New England to preserve the erased stories of their people—learning that legacy must be carried, not just remembered.

SYNOPSIS:

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, two Black women — Amina, formerly enslaved, and Harriet, a free-born writer — begin a journey across New England to recover the untold stories of Black resistance, legacy, and survival. The pilot episode, “What Remains,” follows their return to Medford and Boston in 1781, where memory and mission converge.

Amina is drawn back to the site of her enslavement — the Royall Plantation in Medford — to reclaim a buried token of cultural identity. Harriet, who grew up free and educated, revisits her childhood home to retrieve her mother’s journal. The tension between their backgrounds becomes clear as they record memory differently: Amina through feeling and fragments, Harriet through precision and fact. Yet both women are compelled by the same question: How do we preserve the truths that were never written?

Their path leads them to Boston, where they stay with Belinda, a formerly enslaved elder who has recently been manumitted. Belinda and her daughter Prine, who has special needs, embody oral tradition, quiet strength, and the pain of a fractured legacy. As Amina listens to Belinda’s story and receives a bundle of artifacts — buttons, cloth, a dictated list — she begins to understand memory as something held in the body, in objects, and in breath.

Harriet and Amina attend a secret community meeting above a print shop, where they witness firsthand testimonies from Primus Hall and George Middleton — men who resisted not just with arms, but with education, dignity, and silence turned speech. These moments deeply move both women, forcing them to reconsider their roles as collectors and carriers of history.

By the episode’s end, Amina and Harriet are off to find the voice of someone new. A child’s kite made from discarded broadsheets lifts into the fog — a fragile but flying metaphor for the stories they've collected. As the road opens before them, Amina holds Harriet’s gifted blank book — a journal once meant for names. She’s ready now, not just to remember but to write.

Their journey- and the series- has begun.

ECHOES OF THE NORTH - "WHAT REMAINS" (PILOT)