A Story of Hearts ‘Divided’

Set in the late 1800s, the Showtime historical drama, “A House Divided,” tells the story of Amanda America Dickson, a woman of mixed race who fights for the $500,000 inheritance left by her white father, an antebellum plantation owner in Georgia.

Amanda’s story begins in violence, when her father, David Dickson, played by Sam Waterston, rapes one of his slaves, Julia (LisaGay Hamilton). The resulting child is fair-skinned Amanda. So that her child can be free, Julia gives the baby to Dickson and his mother (Shirley Douglas), and Amanda is raised as white.

During the Civil War, when the Dicksons finally tell Amanda (Jennifer Beals), about her heritage, and life as she knew it crumbles, she leaves the estate. It is only after she wages a battle in court in 1885 to keep her inheritance that Amanda come to grips with her past and reunites with her mother. Tim Daly plays her attorney.

But “House Divided,” based on Kent Anderson Leslie’s book “Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege,” and directed by John Kent Harrison (“What the Deaf Man Heard”) has a deeper meaning to Beals.

“This isn’t just about slavery,” says Beals, who also is of mixed race. “This is about the history of the United States. It is about everything--capitalism, identity, authenticity, power. It is all wrapped into this one little story.”

“What’s interesting is that the people in town knew about Amanda,” says Beals. “Everybody knew [Dickson] had a mixed-race daughter, but just everybody turned a blind eye because he was so wealthy, which means power. It is not unlike today where celebrities bypass the laws that other people who are not celebrities can’t bypass.”

In the book, Amanda’s family tree was even more complex, offers Beals. “What is not included in the film is that Julia had two other children by a slave, Joe. Iola, who died when she was very young, and a woman named Julianna. What’s so fascinating is that here is Amanda living in the house being raised primarily between her father and grandmother. You know, Amanda had to have seen her half-sister walking around [the plantation].”

Paris Qualles (“The Tuskegee Airmen”) adapted Leslie’s book, deciding to focus on the complex relationship between Dickson and Julia. “If you read the book it deals with Amanda’s life, all the way through to her death,” Qualles says.

“As I was reading the book the thing that most jumped out at me wasn’t necessarily her story, because Amanda was just a product of her environment. The real interesting story for me were the dynamics between the father and the mother.”

Though Dickson did rape Julia, Qualles saw more than a single violent act. “He regretted the rape almost immediately and essentially fell in love with this woman, but it was unrequited. He tried to make amends and she never really forgave him.”

Waterston says that Dickson probably felt bad for what he did to Julia, “but he did it in the context of people like him doing whatever they felt like” with the female slaves.

During the production, he and Hamilton discussed the reasons why Julia could never forgive Dickson.

“One of the things LisaGay pointed out when we were working on the movie ... is the kinds of humiliations that black people have had to absorb and continue to have to absorb in this day leave a residual resentment and rage that can not be erased just because some of the conditions are erased.”

Though this story took place more than 100 years ago, Beals says America is still struggling with the race issue. “We grapple with the idea of how race informs identity and authenticity,” she says.

During the slavery era, Qualles adds, there were thousands of mixed-race children born “to the point where there are a lot of geneticists who say today that a full 50% of white Americans who go back five or six generations have black blood in them. Of course, this country is in such a state of denial. It’s one of the great sociological tragedies that we are not able to move beyond this.”

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