The Terrible Transformation, the first chapter in the tragic story of slavery in America. The series' premiere program challenges popular misconceptions about the origins of slavery in America. Racial slavery did not arrive full-blown with the first Africans to set foot on Virginia soil in the early seventeenth century. It evolved over several decades, one law at a time, to become the institution with which we are now most familiar. "Slavery and freedom existed side by side in this country," says Cornell University historian Margaret Washington. "The issue is: Did it always have to be that way? And the early history of America indicates that it probably did not."