Nine Emmy awards were given to this masterful production of the fictitious account of life from a 110-year-old slave. The script covers the life of Miss Jane Pittman (Cicely Tyson) from her days as a slave during the Civil War to the start of the civil rights movement in the 1960's. The scene when she drinks from the 'white's only' water fountain due to the Jim Crow laws in the segregated south is one of the most defining moments in the film. Based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines.