Woodbury County Republicans

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.