The original 110-minute TV movie of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was based on a novel by Ernest J. Gaines. I saw it when it first came out in 1973 and never forgot it.

The story starts out in February of 1962 on a classic southern plantation. In a set of ramshackle old cabins called the "quarters," a simple gathering is taking place to celebrate the 110th birthday of an ex-slave named Miss Jane Pittman. In the middle of the party, her best friend Lena's teenaged son Jimmy interrupts and asks Miss Jane to help with a civil rights protest down at the local courthouse. Jimmy and his friends plan to drink from the "White Only" drinking fountain.

Miss Jane, in her wisdom, refuses, saying she's too old for such nonsense, but after some serious and wise discussion, proclaims that she'll wait for God to give her a sign. Jimmy can't wait for her sign, and recruits a young black girl instead, knowing that any male black would be killed on the spot for even trying to get near that fountain. They are met by the sheriff and four officers armed with rifles and billy clubs. Jimmy is brutally beaten along with his friends and put in jail, but mysteriously, no one can get in to visit him.

Meanwhile a young white reporter from New York, stirred and inspired by the civil rights movement, decides to do a feature article on Miss Jane. He wants to know what it was like to be a slave and what starts out as an impersonal interview becomes a labor of love for reporter and subject. Astonished at how clear her memory is, he decides to explore every aspect of slavery and its aftermath, not only the facts but the emotions as well. In the process, he comes to love her like his own grandmother, and she him as a cherished son.

Her story begins as a nine-year-old slave girl named Ticey watches a tired and weary band of rebel soldiers show up at her Louisiana plantation to beg for water. With care and sympathy, she helps them, but no sooner have they arrived than they have to flee when the conquering Yankees arrive, who are also greeted with the same hospitality.

This chapter of the story contains one of the most moving scenes. Cpl. Louis Brown, a kind Yankee soldier, notices she has no shoes, her habit of calling him "master", and the obviously harsh way she's been mistreated. In a tender scene that'll take your breath away, he stops her from serving his men, sits her down, and takes her slave name away from her, renaming her "Miss Jane." He kindly promises her that if she has any more trouble that she should come up to Ohio and see him.

A year later the slaves are all called together by their master. The raw emotion of the man watching his whole future dissolve, and potentially losing everything he has, gives this piece a balanced perspective. The man must now beg those he once owned not to leave him, but hypocritically offers nothing to induce them to stay. His humbled pleas turn to hatred as he watches those who leave him go through the front gate. Jane will never forget the day her master declared them "...then, henceforward, and forever... free." The stunned and lost look on the master's face was matched only by the awed and lost looks on the slaves' faces.