Wide Awake Films Produces a New PBS Secrets of the Dead Episode
Kansas City - On October 23rd, 2024 at 10:00 PM PBS will broadcast Wide Awake Films' latest production, Secrets of the Dead: The Civil War's Lost Massacre [Show Link] to a national audience. The film tells the story of the search for the lost burial site of a group of 22 African American soldiers ambushed near Simpsonville, Kentucky. This episode will be the fourth in Secrets of the Dead’s 22nd season.
These soldiers were a part of the US Army's 5th US Colored Cavalry, which was formed at Camp Nelson, Kentucky during the American Civil War. Over the span of less than a half a year, these men would escape slavery, enlist in the Union war effort, engage in battle, witness a tragic refugee crisis... and be gunned down by Confederate guerillas.
The story would have been largely forgotten if not for the efforts of a group of citizen historians and local archaeologists determined to tell the story - and find the mass grave - of the 5th USCC. The Civil War's Lost Massacre explores the years of research conducted by David E. Brown, a descendant of 5th USCC soldier Samuel Truehart; Jerry Miller, a local historian whose descendants once enslaved members of the 5th USCC; and Juanita White, a local historian and playwright whose countless hours searching the National Archives have yielded precious details about the massacre.
Together with Archaeologist Philip Mink and a team of engineers from the EduceLab at the University of Kentucky, Wide Awake Films' cameras captured the most detailed search for this burial site ever conducted. The Civil War's Lost Massacre reveals what the team's drone-mounted ground penetrating radar and magentrometer sensed beneath the surface...
To complete this film, Wide Awake's team of writers and researchers combed private, local, and national archives, while its production unit filmed in multiple locations in central Kentucky and Missouri. To recreate the world of the 5th USCC more than 40 actors were cast, directed, and outfitted with period-accurate costumes.
Said Wide Awake Films' Executive Producer, Shane Seley, "No place experienced the Civil War quite the way Kentucky did. We've been making films about this era for more than thirty years and the details we discovered here were unlike anything we'd ever come across before."
Showrunner Michael Mavretic echoed those thoughts, "'The Civil War's Lost Massacre' tells a story that is both heroic and tragic, but it is a hopeful story as well. Between the continued, dedicated efforts of people like David, Jerry, and Juanita, and the tools available to archaeologists like Phil, stories that were once 'lost to history' can now be told in incredible detail."
Wide Awake Films is an award-winning producer of history films, documentaries, and museum interactives headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. To learn more about Wide Awake Films please visit: https://wideawakefilms.com/
Secrets of the Dead is an award-winning history and science PBS documentary series created by The WNET Group. For more on this series please visit: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/
