When I first came to Georgia as an adult and was able to see the trees and how densely packed they were and how dark it was beneath them I got a much better idea what it meant to be running for one's life. Even now I look into and through the trees when I'm out driving.
No tv show, article or photograph ever prepared me for that. I don't believe anything positive has ever come by way of avoiding the aspects of history, personal or collective, that are painful, anger inducing, or shameful. In fact I think that's how we ended up with the whitewashed version of history that we are taught in schools. That's why you get people saying that they "wouldn't have been a slave" because they're so tough. They think that only weak people were enslaved, and take on the same view of slavery as the people in the story who were trying to redeem the slaveowners instead of accepting a more factual version of the institution of slavery as a whole.
It's easier to believe that in some way 100 people wanted to be slaves to 3 owners than to believe that it wasn't just 3 owners, but an entire society and country that did everything it could to ensure that they justified the institution of slavery.