Meeting David Wilson is a feature length documentary about the enduring legacy of slavery in today’s young Black society. David Wilson, a 28-year-old African-American journalist, travels into his family’s past to find answers to America’s racial divide. Along the way, he learns of a plantation in North Carolina where his family was once enslaved. 

 

David discovers that the plantation is owned by a 62-year-old white man, who is a direct descendant of his family’s slave master and is also named David Wilson. This discovery leads to a momentous encounter between these two men who share a name, but whose ancestors were on the opposite sides of freedom.

The film begins as David revisits his upbringing in the gritty streets of Newark, New Jersey. He recounts how growing up in a turbulent environment, combined with the negative influences of popular images in music and media, stirred his desire to uncover the truth about his identity and his family’s past. Through genealogical research, he discovers his roots are steeped in slavery in North Carolina. After careful consideration and talks with family, friends and complete strangers, David decides to travel to North Carolina to meet this other David Wilson.

 

On his trip south, David poses difficult questions about the current state of Black America and its relation to the legacy of slavery, asking Americans of all races, “What’s wrong with Black people?” Upon arriving in North Carolina, David prepares himself to meet his counterpart by attempting to experience life as his ancestors did. He spends a day “pulling” tobacco, discovering the original slave quarters that housed his forbears and visiting the church his great grandfather founded just after emancipation.

David travels to the “Big House” and finally confronts his white namesake on the plantation where his ancestors had been enslaved. He asks poignant questions that lead to a dynamic and honest dialogue concerning American history, slavery, religion and reparations.

Curious to learn if they have more than a name in common, David tests his DNA. One of the results of this test identifies his African origins. Once this match is made, the lab provides him with a name and location of an African ethnic group and he travels back to Africa to complete his journey.

One of the film’s emotional apexes is a family reunion in which David brings more than 50 members of his family from New Jersey back to the plantation for an extremely unusual “family reunion” with the white Wilsons. The Wilsons meet on the very plantation where their ancestors’ lives were divided by slavery and where racial equality was once unthinkable.