Focus : The Lost Migration : DISCOVERY DOCUMENTARY EXAMINES 30-YEAR EXODUS OF SOUTHERN BLACKS

For African Americans living in the oppressive rural South 50 years ago, the urban North was “the promised land.” From 1940 to 1970, 5 million blacks left the South to journey north in search of more freedom, new jobs and new lives. Though a new cable documentary suggests it was the largest peacetime migration of any people in the world, few Americans know it happened or understand how the massive exodus affected the country culturally, economically, politically and socially.

“The Promised Land,” a Discovery Channel five-part series premiering Sunday, personalizes the 30-year odyssey through real-life storytelling, never-before-seen footage and photos, an original jazz score by Terence Blanchard (“Malcolm X”) and historic blues and folk recordings. Art also plays an important part in the series, specifically Jacob Lawrence’s 1941 narrative “Migration of the Negro,” which has been animated for the series’ opening credits.

Based on Nicholas Lemann’s acclaimed 1991 book of the same name, ‘The Promised Land” is narrated by two-time Oscar nominee Morgan Freeman (“Driving Miss Daisy,” “Street Smart”), who participated in the migration as a youngster. Eventually, Freeman eventually back to Mississippi--in 1989.

The series, Freeman says, “doesn’t mean anything to the older people, the people who lived through it, the people who know about it. This means everything to young people, people who know nothing about it, people who need historical input to process today’s information. This is a history lesson.”

It’s also an education for white audiences.

“For white America, black America doesn’t really have a human face,” explains Lemann, who is Southern and white. “It has a weird human face consisting of extremes--very successful celebrities and entertainers and people being pushed into a paddy wagon during drug raids. We live in a very segregated country. I think there are a lot of white people who don’t know that people who you see (in the documentary) exist. People, ordinary people with dignity, who work and have ordinary aspirations.”

Though Lemann’s book concentrated on Clarksdale, Miss., the documentary, produced by the BBC and Discovery, covers the experiences of African Americans from the entire state. “We tried to tell the story more broadly in terms of the time span,” says executive producer Anthony Geffen. “We actually interviewed over six months about 1,000 people and put together a new body of work that sort of worked with Nick’s original. I sat with my researchers for weeks in churches. After services, everybody would become animated and say this was an important story and start remembering experiences.”

In general, both Geffen and Lemann encountered people who were more than willing to talk. “There was one exception to the rule,” Lemann says. “The people whose lives had been rougher and less successful.”

“I think there is a terrific strength (in the people),” Geffen says. “I think people who are in Nick’s book and who are in the film went through the most incredible transformation. They left and came up against some of the worst kind of human conditions and social situations. Segregated housing in the South turned into segregated housing in the North.”

Among those migrants featured are Sterling Dominic Plumpp, a professor of English and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was born on a plantation in 1940; Uless Carter, the grandson of a slave who became a minister in Chicago and returned to Clarksdale in 1981, and Florida Denton, the eldest of nine children who arrived in Chicago at 16 with a dime in her shoe and nothing in her pocket and who has recently resumed her education.

In Freeman’s case, the actor lived with his paternal grandmother in Mississippi while his parents found work in Chicago. He rejoined his parents at age 6 after his grandmother died. “I don’t know how long my grandmother had me,” he recalls. “I had no real memory of my mother. I had a sense memory. When I smelled her, I knew who she was.”

Freeman wasn’t impressed with Chicago. “There was no real reason for me to feel at home in Chicago,” he says. “It was winter and I hadn’t experienced anything like that before. There was more freedom, more work and more money (in Chicago).”

Still, he adds, “we didn’t stay more than about six or seven months and went back to Mississippi. They tried to make it (in Chicago). It was an ongoing thing. We just always managed to make out better in Mississippi. We had better support there. Plus, you get more care in a smaller place than in a big faceless city. I have always been comfortable in Mississippi.”

In a pure economic sense, Lemann says, the North was, indeed, the promised land for African Americans. “I would say it would be impossible to find a single migrant who is making less money now than before the migration,” Lemann says.

But in terms of spirit and culture, the vote is mixed. “I think you will find massive amounts of nostalgia for the South, a strange kind of nostalgia for segregation because of the idea that all elements of black society had to be together,” Lemann says.

The first two episodes of “The Promised Land” air Sunday at 9 p.m. and midnight; the series continues through Wednesday at 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.