In doing so, it explores Philadelphia\u2019s social history, and considers the lives of everyday people \u2014 and how they drove and were impacted by the Revolution and early Independence.<\/p>\n
A different kind of 250 project <\/p>\n
St. Clair Franklin, the film\u2019s creator and executive producer, has \u201chad an itch\u201d to make a project for America\u2019s 250th. A businessman, former deputy city rep for arts and culture, and at one time Philadelphia\u2019s chief British diplomat,<\/a> he\u2019d gotten into film work when he was working with Penn Annenberg Center.<\/p>\n He wanted to create a film on the Revolutionary and early-American era that \u201cleft Independence Hall\u201d and considered the roles of ordinary people, especially Black Americans. He\u2019d watched more than 65 films during the research phase of the documentary and was struck by how nearly all of them \u201cnever went into the streets. They never talked about what was going on in Philadelphia during this. What was the social history? How many people were there? How many languages were spoken?\u201d<\/p>\n How are we continually working to make America a more equal nation, in an attempt to make the ideal \u2014 all men are created equal \u2014\u00a0true for everyone?<\/p>\n \u201cI was thinking about how do we create a film that can travel throughout our region to start a conversation about Philadelphia\u2019s history and civic responsibility? Because these Africans participated in public life, they took their civic responsibilities seriously,\u201d St. Clair Franklin says.<\/p>\n He was part of an Oxford University-made film on the slave trade.<\/a> Through that project, he connected with the film crew at Bear House Media, a UK-based production company He then partnered with a number of Philly institutions \u2014 Mother Bethel AME, the Museum of the American Revolution, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and numerous historians and archivists.<\/p>\n Students from Moore College of Art and Design got to work with the production team in the UK on some of the art scenes. Students at the Community College of Philadelphia, under the supervision of musician and producer Professor Paul Geissenger, worked on the sound design, voiceover recordings and in mixing an original score by New Jersey-based musician and Grammy Award-nominated songwriter Christopher Michael Stevens.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re bringing in a lot of local talent,\u201d St. Clair Franklin says.<\/p>\n A tale of two fires <\/p>\n The film traces Philadelphia\u2019s history from William Penn\u2019s arrival in 1682 to the Civil War. Along the way, it considers interactions between the Quakers and the Lenni-Lenape; the roles Black people, both freed and enslaved, played during the American Revolution; the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic; the Haitian Revolution and Philadelphian\u2019s responses; and Pennsylvania\u2019s 1838 state Constitution, which ended voting rights for Black men in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n Two notorious fires bookend the narrative: the 1666 Great Fire of London (which influenced Penn\u2019s vision for how to plan a safer city in Philadelphia) and a mob of White, anti-abolitionist men\u2019s burning of Pennsylvania Hall, home of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, in 1838. It considers James Forten, a Black patriot and Philadelphia businessman who supported American Independence and rallied Black troops to fight in the war of 1812. (Forten\u2019s daughter wrote the poem featured in the scene at Chris\u2019.)<\/p>\n St. Clair Franklin acts as the viewer\u2019s guide, taking them through archives in the Independence Seaport Museum, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical Society and out into the streets of present-day Philadelphia: cyclists popping wheelies, men fishing on the Schuylkill, people partying at Odunde, SEPTA buses passing our Mural Arts murals.<\/p>\n The juxtaposition of our current moment against this narrative from the past asks views: How did the Revolutionary era shape America today? How are we continually working to make America a more equal nation, in an attempt to make the ideal \u2014 all men are created equal \u2014 true for everyone?<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t choose this project. This project chose me. We want Philadelphians to understand that they\u2019re living in the middle of all this.\u201d \u2014 Oliver St. Clair Franklin<\/p>\n \u201cWe learn so little about the African American community during the Revolutionary era \u2014 and even before leading up to it,\u201d says Dr. Kelli Barnes, a historian who is featured in the film. She is wrapping up an ACE Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship, which stations PhDs at National Park Service sites.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution, really did not have them in mind, but they took it upon themselves \u2014 taking in those words \u2014 to do what they could for themselves and their communities to uplift themselves out of enslavement and to gain and right the vote.\u201d<\/p>\n How to watch Becoming American <\/p>\n The film comes at a time when the federal government is actively trying to erase the stories it\u2019s telling. In February, the National Park Service removed the \u201cFreedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation\u201d from Independence Mall.<\/a> (After the City of Philadelphia sued, the exhibit was restored.)<\/p>\n But even before that removal \u2014 which resulted in public outcry \u2014 they\u2019d been shutting down historical projects. Barnes, who\u2019d been working on digital archive of primary sources focused on early Black Philadelphia at Independence Hall, lost her grant funding in April 2025, at the behest of the Trump administration. The project had been intended to support the School District of Philadelphia\u2019s African American Studies courses. Barnes then became a volunteer historian for the Independence National Historical Park.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was to coincide with the curriculum development \u2026 for the 250th, for the School District celebrating their 20th anniversary of African American studies being a graduation requirement, and for it being the 100th anniversary of Black History Month.\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t choose this project. This project chose me,\u201d St. Clair Franklin says. \u201cWe want Philadelphians to understand that they\u2019re living in the middle of all this.\u201d<\/p>\n