A film about what?

Defending “Lincoln”

Slavery ended in 1865, not 1834.

It ended because a white president decided to fight a war over it and then arm-wrestled a bunch of white politicians in the House to end it in a formal amendment to the US Constitution.

Black soldiers fighting for the Union didn’t end it, however great their contribution to ensuring the North won and the white politicians had a chance to end it.

Occasional slave revolts in the US didn’t end it and some historians think they may actually have entrenched it more deeply in the South.

The same could be said for the rebellion in Haiti.

And the agitation of free blacks like Frederick Douglass didn’t end it, however much it may have helped, alongside the much more widespread white abolitionist agitation, prepare white opinion to accept the end.

Didn’t we have this argument once before?

When Hillary pointed out that Martin Luther King and the many participants in the civil rights struggle didn’t actually change the law, the nation, or its racial institutions.

The Supremes began doing that with Brown and after that numerous courts played a part.

But mostly it was about Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson and the almost exclusively white politicians he got on board for the cause.

The slaves did not free themselves.

Black Americans did not free themselves.

Black Americans did not overthrow Jim Crow and segregation.

And that’s the truth.