PBS series

3009 students: Slavery and the Making of America airs on WILL-TV in two two-part installments: Wednesday, February 9, 8:00-10:00 p.m., and Wednesday, February 16, 8:00-10:00 pm. Watching any or all of it would give you some extremely helpful background for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

From the PBS website:

Slavery and the Making of America is a four-part series documenting the history of American slavery from its beginnings in the British colonies to its end in the Southern states and the years of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship, it looks at slavery as an integral part of a developing nation, challenging the long held notion that slavery was exclusively a Southern enterprise. At the same time, by focusing on the remarkable stories of individual slaves, it offers new perspectives on the slave experience and testifies to the active role that Africans and African Americans took in surviving their bondage and shaping their own lives.

You can learn much more about this series here.