Walkin' the Line

If the Mason-Dixon Line could talk, here are the stories it would tell. Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and travel writer Bill Ecenbarger has walked the Mason-Dixon line -- from its beginning on Fenwick Island, Delaware, to its end at Brown's Hill, Pennsylvania -- diverting left and right to interview the people who live along its border. The line was surveyed between 1763 and 1768 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to settle a dispute between Robert Penn and Lord Calvert, whose family owned what is now the state of Maryland. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law to abolish slavery, making the Mason-Dixon Line the divider between free and slave states. From that moment, it also became a lightning rod for racial conflict that continues to this day. This unique history/travelogue examines the influence of this great divider, which remains the most powerful symbol separating Yankee from Rebel, oatmeal from grits, North from South.