Episode 8

S1 E8: 1865: The Civil War ends but racist hostilities do not. Economically devastated landowners need workers, but few can pay wages, so the system of sharecropping is born. Vicious nightriders pillage plantations after dark, terrorizing the newly freed – until blacksmith Tom marks his clients’ horseshoes to identify the bandits, placing him in deep danger. But the whiplash will soon cut both ways. Chicken George returns, offering a strategy to outwit their debt-holders and allow the family in 1870 to safely leave and settle on their own land in Henning, Tennessee. Alex Haley has the final word.