Bloodlines of the Slave Trade examines the lives of two people whose only connection is a genetic link to John Armfield, one of the most notorious slave traders of the 1830s. Rodney Williams, who is Black, and Susanna Grannis, who is white, each trace their ancestry back to their distant ancestor, detailing the diverging paths their lineages took. While their relationship to this past is fundamentally different, and they never meet in the film, they both share in the telling of the horrific domestic slave trade and the ongoing reverberations of slavery.

While for a long time Susanna tried to ignore her family's history, Rodney and his siblings would not have that privilege.  Tracing the ongoing impact of this shared ancestry in each of their lives, Susanna finds it to be an awakening, while for Rodney it is an exploration of the ongoing damage inflicted by the slave traders. Concluding the journey at Angola State Penitentiary, a plantation owned by Isaac Franklin, Rodney narrates his family's history wherein the link between Black incarceration and the plantation system is as explicit as it could be. Through the narratives of their families and this historical tour, Bloodlines of the Slave Trade illuminates how histories develop, become calcified, and perpetuate through generations, and posits a more honest way to discuss and understand the story of America.

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