"The Butler", Another Young Boy's Recall of History
I had a chance to see movie "The Butler" yesterday. I wasn't sure just what I thought I thought I was going to se, but it turned to be a very good movie. It covered not only civil rights movement but also differing views of black folk at the time (mostly of one family; the butler's). I was nine years old when President John Kennedy was assassinated, which was my point of awakening to politics, and the world began to unfold to me.
Even though I was very young, I remember the lynchings and killings. And they were still happening in the deep south almost until the year I graduated from high school in 1973. The Black Panthers came on the scene in the 1960's. Their goal was to serve and protect the black neighborhoods from police brutality and tyranny. They were not afraid to use force against force, even though they knew that in the end they couldn't win. But they were willing to die to make white America that black people weren't going to be treated as less than men. We wanted our freedom, just like every other American and we wanted it NOW!! Even though I admired the Black Panther Party, I could not see how their actions could accomplish anything but bring the wrath of the whole American government down on the black community, which it did for a time. In the end, the FBI infiltrated the Black Panther Party and turned them against each other and either killed or imprisoned their leaders. But in the end, their efforts also helped to win our rights in the south also. The black Panthers had a shootout in a court house in New Orleans in either the late 1970's or early 1980's. Just as in the recent case of a teenager named Trayvon Martin case, there was nothing that could be done if any white person killed a black person for any reason or for no reason at all. A young man from the northern city of Detroit, Michigan was brutally tortured shot to death and buried in a swamp, because he whistled at a white woman. In those days in the south, a person of color had better not hold the gaze of a white person, which was the reason the "butler's" father was killed in the cotton fields of the south. The butler knowing that it was just a matter of time before that same man would kill him, ran away the south and after many years came to be e butler inside the white house.
The Man was a white house butler from the Harry Truman administration until the Reagan administration, when he was invited to a white house gala, which he did attend. At that point I told my wife that I would not have attended because I would be in a room filled with people I didn't know nor have anything in common with. It was at that gala that the 'butler" began to open his eyes that maybe the way he saw the world wasn't all there was to it. He began to open his own mind to see his son's and other black folk's point of view. But the irony of the situation was that because of the way he conducted himself throughout his work at the white house, his example seemed to have affected the conscience of all those presidents for the better. God had given him grace in the eyes of those presidents much the same way he gave a young man named Joseph grace in the eyes of Pharoah in a story in the Holy Bible. It has been said, and I know it to be true, that God works in mysterious ways. And this is a case in point. When Africans were brought to the new land as slaves, those who brought them here didn't mean them any good, but God did! Now their descendants, though having gone through great trials, now live as citizens of the most prosperous country on the earth. And again this parallels an important event in the Holy Bible when God's chosen people, the Jews were in slavery in Egypt for 400 years. Afterwards they came out, with God's protection, as a nation.
Yes, the movie brought back some memories, many of them not so pleasant. but in the end I recommend that anyone who is able, to go and see it. I think you'll learn something not only about the human condition and also some history, you'll also be moved to want to make your contribution to history, no matter what that contribution may be
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