This weekend I’m looking forward to seeing the movie “The Birth of a Nation”. Last night my father text me asking if I wanted to go and I replied excited to see the film. Nate Parker, a successful black actor, is director and lead actor in the film telling the story of Nat Turner. Turner was a slave, a preacher, who led one of the largest slave uprisings in Virginia in 1831. His work struck fear into the South, prompting an end to slavery. Parker’s work in this film is parallel to Turner’s legacy as Parker used his own voice as a director and an actor (just as Turner used his voice as a preacher) to prompt an end to today’s injustices that continue to attack the black community.
This film has been released at the perfect time. Some are afraid that it may exasperate racial tensions, but the fear is only a fear grounded in ignorance. How can we change the conditions of our community without looking directly at the history that allowed for the development of these conditions. How can we end police brutality and mass incarceration without looking closely at the slavery institutions that transformed into these practices through the loophole of the 13th amendment. We need to educate ourselves on our history, a history that’s been carefully disguised, manipulated and hidden from us. How can we expect the people who enslaved us to teach us about our enslavement? Just recently the UN called for the U.S. government to pay black people the reparations they’re owned for a history of ‘racial terrorism’. Parker’s movie provokes us to recall that history. It’s up to each of us as black people in America to connect ourselves to our ancestors, remember their struggle and call on their strength to continue our collective fight against the white supremacist culture that they lived in hundreds of years ago and that we continue to live in today. This is the same Western (white) culture that perpetuates a criminal image of blacks in order to justify our enslavement today. We must go see this move. There aren’t many movies directed by African Americans that are in theaters so we need to blow up the box office in support of a story our history told by our people.
I’m fully aware of Parker’s history, many of us have been made aware of charges that were made against him while he was in college. Parker wasn’t charged. I find it interesting how black men’s images in the media are constantly bombarded with a ‘criminal past’. I have no idea about Parker’s college experiences but none of us do. When asked about the charges during an interview he appropriately responded that story of Nat Turner is bigger than him and his past. I agree with him. The lead women in the cast also address the controversy surrounding Nate Parker’s past in Essence, ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Actresses Speak: ‘This Isn’t the Nate Parker Story, it’s the Nat Turner Story’, urging potential audiences not to miss out on the film.
“The Birth of a Nation” is in theaters now, I encourage everyone to go and support him, watch the official movie trailer below:
Movie Review:
This weekend was the opening weekend for “The Birth of a Nation”. This was the first movie that I’ve ever seen opening night. I’ve explained above why it was important to me to see the movies in theaters. Now that I’ve seen the movie on both Friday and Saturday of opening weekend I want to share my thoughts on the film. 
Parker touches on several significant essences of black culture within the film. The most evident being the destruction of the black family by oppressive white American institutions. The movie begins with a scene of family separation, the loss of Nat’s father as a child. The audience is immediately thrown into fear and discomfort in moments of pain, sadness and intensity. I sat in my seat with an emotion tied between intense anger and extreme pride, angry by the fact that my ancestors lived through this type of pain and yet extremely proud of the resiliency of my people.
As the movie continued Nat soon becomes a man picking cotton in the fields and driving around Samuel Turner, his master. After Nat meets his wife, Cherry, at an a slave auction we slowly watch as Black love unfolds and melts our hearts. In moments where Nat and Cherry were together it was as though their obstacles and barriers melted away. Nat and Cherry couldn’t always be there for each other physically, but their love for each other kept them strong. Throughout the film there were several moments were slave husbands couldn’t protect their wives from beatings, rape and molestation. My eyes welled up as Black men and women continued to hold on to each other in all their pain, nothing could destroy their loving bond. Here Parker illustrates Black love as the gift of having a partner with you to enjoy life while enduring the pain. Being Black is the power of resiliency. Being a Black family is being a group of strong individuals bound by love.
This is one of the reasons why I d acknowledge every black person I see in white America, because we are family. The separation of family members was a re-occurring theme that stood out to me. Cherry herself shared her mother’s last words to her when they were separated, “Never forget where you came from and that you had a mother”. There were several moments were we saw mothers silently suffer as their children were taken away. Blacks were uprooted from their homes onto new plantations, and were forced to create bonds out of the ones that were broken when they were sold. The inevitability of separation in a Black household is a fear that still rings true today, as parents pray for their children to return home unharmed by police.
In addition to state forces, like police officers or slave catchers, some argue that religion is another white institution that was created to further destroy Blacks. Religion continues to be a powerful force within the African-American community. Christianity is the religion we were taught to believe after being stripped of our own culture. Nat was taught Christianity and later became a preacher. He was used by his master to teach slaves how to ‘calm down’. As Nat preached “Obey thine masters” to his people as he watched them suffer, he was forced to address a conflict within himself about his faith. He questioned how any God could advocate for the bondage of his people. My father commented during the film at this point, “Religion has always been used to control Black people,” I didn’t respond.
Nat decided to read more of the Bible than just the verses he’d been allowed. It was then that he realized the truth, he told his slave brothers, “for every verse that justifies our bondage, there’s another that demands our freedom!”
We must look at more than what our enemy is allowing us to see.
Today I think that a lot of Black people are satisfied with what they’re being ‘allowed’ to see. After viewing this film I am looking forward to reading and learning more about the life and the legacy of Nat Turner. Seeing this movie has further lit my already awoken revolutionary spirit.
Thank you Nate Parker for “The Birth of a Nation” you did and incredible job.
“Our ancestors and our unborn children rejoice!”
-Nat Turner
