Amazing Grace – The American
Sequel
by Paul R. Hollrah
One of the finest film productions of recent years has been the British film,
Amazing Grace, the story of how William Wilberforce, a young idealist in
the British Parliament during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, waged a decades-long struggle to bring an end to the slave trade in
the British Empire.
I can well remember the end of the movie. As the screen went dark and the
credits began to roll, no one moved… everyone in the theater sat quietly as if
glued to their seats. And then, as the house lights came on and moviegoers began
to usher silently from the theater, I’m sure that most white moviegoers felt the
same overwhelming sense of sadness that I felt. One can only imagine what black
moviegoers must have felt.
William Wilberforce was first elected to Parliament in September 1780, at the
age of twenty-one, and quickly earned a reputation as a reformer. In 1783, he
was introduced to a former ship’s surgeon, Rev. James Ramsay, who had observed
firsthand the living conditions of slaves, both aboard ship and on the
plantations of St. Kitts, in the Caribbean.
Deeply moved by what he heard, it spelled the beginning of what was to become
the central purpose of Wilberforce’s life for the next fifty years. Wilberforce
became the champion of the anti-slavery cause and the anti-slavery movement had
what it needed most, a strong and relentless voice in Parliament.
The years that followed were a mixture of success and failure. Bills to
reduce overcrowding on slave ships were passed. A "toothless" compromise calling
for "gradual abolition" passed in 1792. A bill to outlaw the use of British
ships in the slave trade failed in 1794. A bill to prohibit British subjects
from aiding or abetting the slave trade to the French colonies passed in 1806.
Yet, bills designed to outright abolish the slave trade failed numerous times
over a forty year period.
Finally, on July 26, 1833, just three days before Wilberforce’s death, a bill
to abolish slavery was passed by Parliament. His fifty year struggle to end
slavery in the British Empire was won posthumously.
Thus, if it is true that confession is food for the soul, the British people
have now publicly made their confession. What remains now is for Americans to
make the same cathartic confession, telling the powerful story of slavery and
emancipation in our own country. Unfortunately, while it is a story that demands
to be told, it is a story that Hollywood filmmakers will likely ignore because
it would be entirely too damaging, perhaps even fatal, to the Democratic
Party.
For example, it was Democrats, northern and southern, who insisted that black
slaves be counted as just three fifths of a person. It was Democrats, northern
and southern, who enacted the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1854 and who gave
new life to the pro-slavery movement with the enactment of the Missouri
Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was Democrats, northern and southern,
who opposed the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and
15th Amendments, outlawing slavery and giving blacks full citizenship
and voting rights, and who opposed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875. It
was Democrats, northern and southern, who embraced the Ku Klux Klan as the
party’s own paramilitary arm, achieving through terror, arson, and murder, that
which they could no longer achieve within the law.
It was Democrats who enacted Black Codes, denying African Americans the same
constitutional rights and privileges afforded to whites, and it was Democrats
who enacted the Jim Crow laws, restricting the use of public accommodations by
blacks. It was not until the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, in the 1960s,
when Democrats began to see African Americans as a potentially valuable voting
bloc, that the party embraced equality and economic security for black
citizens.
All of these things are part of our history, but if one were to ask the
average black man-on-the-street to recite a credible history of the black man in
America, few would be able to do so. Whatever black history is taught in our
public schools and on our college campuses has been written by and is being
taught by individuals who value political success at the polls above all else.
They understand that, if African Americans were to vote in roughly the same
proportions as the rest of the population (53-47 percent for Democrats over
Republicans, or vice versa), Democratic strength in the U.S. Congress and the
state legislatures would be reduced by half, or more, and the election of a
Democrat president would be nothing more than a forlorn hope.
But truth is truth and it cannot be suppressed forever… no matter whose ox
might be gored. If actor Mel Gibson had the courage to produce and film The
Passion of the Christ, perhaps there is also someone in Hollywood with the
courage to produce a film titled, Amazing Grace – The American Sequel.
