Pedigree is the voice of a virtually invisible population in the United States: dark-skinned black Americans. The most famous black Americans are well documented: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, W.E.B DuBois etc., although referred to as black, they are all multi-racial. With the exception of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was not considered a part of the American power structure) and ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, dark-skinned black Americans have been under-represented or acknowledged as a part of the American fabric. Pedigree is the inspirational story about James, a very black-skinned man that grows up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1970's. Rejected by his mother, abandoned by his father, and shunned by both the white and black alike, James navigates through foreign territories and develops a schizophrenic lifestyle that teeters between fame and self-destruction.