IN SEARCH OF BASS REEVES

By the end of his illustrious career, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves may well have been the preeminent lawman of the Old West. He brought upwards of 3,000 outlaws to justice and served in law enforcement for 32 years after the Civil War. In this documentary, we explore Bass’s life from captive slave to legendary lawman, through the antebellum South to the fierce battlefields of the Western Theater of the Civil War and the untamed plains of the Indian Territory where Native American tribes engaged in chattel slavery, holding African Americans in bondage on plantations that resembled those of the American South. We follow Bass as he strives to uphold the Constitution while fighting accusations against his character by a hostile press intent on riling up the local population against him as he endured great family tragedies that would break a lesser man. We pursue the long- hidden truths of his life as a father who arrested his own son for murder, a Black man who hunted down outlaws of all races, and a deputy marshal who is one of the greatest lawmen of the Old West. His story is one of an escape to freedom and the dangers of the West for a former slave who rose to become a legend of the law. Join us as we go in search of Bass Reeves.