Journey's End
In this Peabody Award winning (1990) documentary series, Daisy Turner of Grafton, Vermont recounts family stories from her life and the life of her father, Alec who was born a slave on a Viginia plantation.
Journey's End: The Memories and Traditions of Daisy Turner and her Family" follows the story of the Turner family--as told by 100 year old Daisy Turner--from shipwreck off Africa, to slavery on a Virginia plantation and eventual freedom on a Vermont farm. Daisy's stories, and those of her nephews Bruce Turner and Godfrey Hall, cover four generations of African-American experience dating from the mid 19th century (including stories of slavery and the Civil War) to the final decade of the 20th.
Daisy Turner of Grafton, Vermont, was a remarkable individual. When folklorist Jane Beck first met her in 1983, it was clear that her stories must be recorded. Over a period of a year, Jane devoted one day a week to interviewing Daisy. These tens of hours of tape-recorded conversation gave Jane a solid basis for developing the Peabody Award-winning radio series "Journey's End: The Memories and Traditions of Daisy Turner and her Family."
Daisy Turner's storytelling had long been appreciated by members of her family and her Grafton neighbors, but Jane Beck felt strongly that it was important to present her stories to a larger audience. Not only was Daisy a master storyteller, but she was also an African American; her stories vividly portrayed her family's experience under slavery in the American South, reaching back even to her grandfather's youth in Africa. As Daisy often explained, "See we didn't just come from nothing and nowhere, we've got a background, and the background can be traced right down to the roots." Because white society, and by extension, white historians have overlooked, denied, or even suppressed the history and cultural traditions of African Americans, it is essential that the stories of people like Daisy now see the light of day. Daisy Turner died in 1988 at the age of 104.
This new version, a fresh transfer from the 1" preservation master analog tape, was fully digitally remastered in 2006 by Richard Hess (www.richardhess.com/tape).
