Conspiracy Theorists Guide to The Birth of a Nation

#TheBirthOfANation 

   Before I saw The Birth of a Nation I, like many of you, have been bombarded with controversy surrounding this film. Unlike the original 1915 American silent film The Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) that revered the KKK and was screened at the White House, this version by Nate Parker focuses on the life of Rev. Nat Turner and his slave revolt that took place in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. From two-faced people who praised The Great Debaters now crucifying Nate Parker about a decades old rape allegation, to people critiquing its weekend box office numbers like its a rap album trying to go platinum. From black feminists who didn't see the film debating about scenes that didn't exist, to white folks writing bruised ego reviews because they looked bad. Everybody and their dog has had something to say about this film that has evoking many people to feel some kinda way. Many reviews have been calling it a strait box office flop. My question is, how Sway? How? To begin, this was a $100,000 personal investment for Parker. That's how much he put up. The rest of the $8.5 million production budget was made possible by other investors. Premiering at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, the largest U.S. independent festival which annually takes place in Utah, The Birth of a Nation was honored as the Best of the Fest and won the Audience Award of a U.S. Drama and the U.S. Grand Jury Prize. To get this kind of reception at this festival is BIG! It was so big that following its premiere Fox Searchlight Pictures, The Weinstein Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Netflix got in a bidding war to buy it. That doesn't look like a lemon to me. Parker eventually sold its "worldwide rights" to Fox Searchlight Pictures for an unprecedented $17.5 million. Remember, this was a $100,000 personal investment for Parker. When the film was finally released in 2,105 theaters across America on October 7th, the opening weekend brought in $7 million. At the date of this writing, the film has grossed $15 million; a $6.5 million profit when you subtract the $8.5 million production budget. The only way to describe that is profitable and this profit is not even considering its Lifetime Gross potential. For example, The Color Purple had a budget of $15 million and in a generation has grossed $98.4 million to date. Naw The Birth of a Nation didn't have no $245 million production budget like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a package that was flipped almost 9 times since December 2015 to reach $2 billion worldwide, but The Birth of a Nation is still a profitable investment that will appreciate in value over time. It's modest slow money.

   One of the main criticisms surrounding this film, that has been levied at Nate Parker, has been some 1999 rape charges Parker was acquitted for in 2001. I cannot say for sure what went down yet the court transcripts can offer those of you some insight. What I will say is that black actresses, actors, producers, directors and etc. are treated very different in Hollywood and in the Media. For example, take white writer, actor and Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski who was arrested and charged in 1977 for rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. Polanski took a plea deal of a lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse but before the sentencing he fled to France and has been living as a fugitive ever since. Now living in Poland, its Prime Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has recently called upon its Supreme Court to extradite Polanski to the US. Here's the kicker, over 100 Hollywood directors have stepped up in the past, even signing a petition, to show their support for Polanski while well aware of his plea deal. One of those supporters, another writer, actor and Academy Award-winning director Woody Allen who actually married his step daughter who was thirty-five years younger than him, has also been accused of molesting a 7 year old child. I mention this to give context to a double standard. At this very moment Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are still praised, awarded and looked upon as Hollywood Icons yet people aren't really talking about how pervasive this sickness is in America, including women rights activists and feminists. I did back in January when the Bill Cosby accusations came out. All things being equal, I would love to see a larger discussion about men like Polanski, Allen, other men and women like them, and even boycotts of their films -especially from those who are leading these critiques about Nate Parker's accusations. 

My Grandmother, Inez Dorsey Frank

   In regards to the film itself, let me start by saying I appreciated it in a way that some may not be able to relate to. I am a direct descendant of prisoners of war [slaves], literally. My great-great-great grandfather Josiah Henson was born into slavery in Charles County Maryland on June 15th, 1789. A forerunner of the Underground Railroad, Henson was enslaved for 41 years until he escaped to Canada with his wife and four sons. Once settled he was instrumental in helping other blacks organize to find the land and found the Dawn Settlement through negotiating the purchase 400 acres. He was the catalyst behind establishing the British-American Institute for fugitive slaves and military strategist who organized a Black Militia who fought in the Rebellion of 1837. In addition, he continued to travel back into America many times helping hundreds gain their freedom. I was blessed to learn this as a child and it gave me a sense of pride in a legacy that many of my people didn't have the benefit of knowing. Josiah had twelve children altogether and from his family was born a great grand-nephew named Matthew Henson; a famous explorer who traveled to the North Pole that many learn about during Black History Month every year. Matthew Henson fell in love with a beautiful Inuit woman named Akatingwah and they had a son, his only child, named Anaukaq.  

     I mention some of my ancestry because throughout the film I couldn't help but recognize the striking parallels between the life of Josiah Henson and Nat Turner. In fact, I would not be surprised if Nate Parker used elements of my great-great-great grandfather's life for Nat Turner's narrative. Why wouldn't he? Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of one of the greatest American novels Uncle Tom's Cabin, did. Here are just some of those parallels:

• Both Josiah and Nathaniel are biblical names.
• Both were born into slavery and prophesied by elders to be great leaders among their people when they were children. This prophesy was true in both cases.
• Both learned scripture as children. 
• Both of their fathers, at three or four years old, were separated from their family after assaulting a white man.
• Both were raised by their mothers.
• Both became Reverends in their late teens.
• Both were given permission to travel to various plantations to preach.
• Both were married in their early twenties.
• Both organized black militias to fight against oppression.

   One of the most important parallels is both of these freedom fighters have been buried in American History with their names used to shield its dirt. As mentioned, elements of Josiah Henson's life were used for the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, yet he was no Uncle Tom. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Confessions of Nat Turner that Time Magazine included in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, Nat Turner is characterized as a sex crazed bisexual simpleton. That is why it's important to share and control our narrative. If not, our future generations will think Josiah Henson was like Uncle Ruckus and Nat Turner was Ray Lewis. That is a tragedy. It's also tragic if this happened to our life when we're no longer here. 

   Because The Birth of a Nation is still very new I encourage you to see and judge it for yourselves. Regardless if you choose to see it or not, I also encourage you to do further research on slave revolts in North America. One of the best resource books I've read on the subject is Black Rebellion: Eyewitness Accounts of Major Slave Revolts by author Dr. Sujan Dass.

Peace,
Saladin 

Rest In Peace

Have you ever considered that Confederate Flag waving may be more of a symbol of reconciliation than succession? Or that many southerners, and their northern kinfolk, still feel perpetually slighted by the United States Government? Well consider the fact that in the 1860's, after the Civil War, Congress enacted legislation that authorized the President to purchase "cemetery grounds" to be used as national cemeteries for soldiers who died in the service of the country. By "soldiers" it meant Union soldiers, not Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers could not be buried in national cemeteries, nor were they afforded any benefits from the United States Government. So those aren't Confederate soldier names engraved on Veteran's Memorials or Confederate soldiers being memorialized on Veteran's Day -a National Holiday. When the remains of Confederate soldiers were found on the battlefield lying near those of Union soldiers, the Union soldiers were removed, buried with honor and they'd leave the Confederates’ bodies rotting in field. It was only because of the fear of disease spreading were their bodies put in temporary shallow graves and marked with wooden headboards for identification. And it wasn't until private women organizations, such as the Wake County Ladies Memorial Association in North Carolina, assumed the initial financial responsibility to remove these Confederates' and bury them in southern cemeteries. Keep in mind that because the Federal Government administrated this construction of these National Cemeteries, former Confederate States also paid for this. Between 1898 and 1968, the government added sections to the national cemetery to accommodate the graves of veterans from the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The cemetery’s annex is located due north of the historic original 17-acre property. Today, more than 6,000 veterans lay at rest in the national cemetery and there are almost 4 million people, "non-Confederate" Veterans of every war and conflict, buried with honor in 147 national cemeteries on about 20,000 acres of land. 

So here it is, after the Civil War ended, the United States Government buried and memorialized their own union soldiers, symbolically spit on the unmarked graves of their southern kinfolk, and then made them financially responsible for a large part of constructing national cemeteries they could not be buried in and monuments they couldn't be memorialized on. And to add further insult to injury, black veterans earned a place in the ground and name on these same memorial monuments. Some present day American patriots would simply say, "That's what rebels get!" Yeah, well do you really think that's fair and reconciliatory? What about the noble American idea of being charitable to the opposition? It's not like every Confederate soldier was a slaver, they fully understood what they were fighting for and they were unrelated to anyone up north; the Civil War was like the Hatfields and McCoy's. The McCoy's won and made the Hatfields pay for a large part of the clean-up, an elaborate cemetery and monuments for the McCoy veterans for generations. Rescue me if I'm wrong but that doesn't seem like the best way to heal open wounds and every year during Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and etc. this history is indirectly, or maybe directly, thrown in people's faces. Also, I'm sure some of you are aware that there are soldiers in ALL WARS, including the Civil War, who fought and died for a cause they didn't fully understand or oftentimes didn't agree with. Armies need bodies and sometimes that's exactly what people were. One of the biggest tragedies is to see people overlook, minimize or trivialize that fact. Just because one of these soldiers died on what may be considered a losing side doesn't personally make such a soldier and/or their family treacherous traitors or losers. It also doesn't make the same kind of soldiers who survived on the other side winners. These soldiers who sacrifice[d] their life for a cause they don't/didn't understand or agree with reflects the same marginalized groups in America that have been historically losing lives regardless who is declared a winner in war. THAT lost of life should always be acknowledged.

In this respect, one of the reasons historical wounds remain open in America is its perpetual disrespect and lack of acknowledge for the dead. From those who have died from the genocide of our Indigenous People, Blacks who were brought here and enslaved [Maafa], Interment Camps of the Japanese, southern Americans after the Civil War, Immigrants in the 1900's and of course present day Middle Easterners/Muslims and Southeast Asians. I recently attended a viewing/discussion of the documentary Fire in the Heartland at Niagara University by its BSU. Fire in the Heartland is about the National Guard's murder/wounding of Kent State students [May 4 Massacre] and the history of student protests in America. One of the most reprehensible parts of this story was how Kent State and United State Government disrespectfully handling the deaths of the fours students and nine who were wounded -one who suffered permanent paralysis. President Nixon issued a statement which read in part, "This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." The problem with his statement was that the protest on that day on May 4th was peaceful and there are images and file footage to prove that. It took nearly twenty years, the 1990's, to even erect some sort of Kent State Memorial in remembrance of this horrible incident and even then there was controversy. This, including the Jackson State Murders; where two students were shot and twelve wounded by the police as they peacefully protested the Vietnam War and United States invasion of Cambodia reflect a systemic attitude in America about death. The death of those who are not viewed as Americans. Fast forward to the incidents of violence by local/state/federal law enforcement agencies against protesters and the handling of the dead surrounding the Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, Baltimore and etc. and you'll see this clear pattern.

150 years after the Civil War, there are some people who use the Confederate Flag as a symbol of hate and white supremacy. That is wrong and unfair. There are others who honestly look at this same flag as a symbolic reminder of their ancestors; some who died in a war they didn't fully understand or agree with, and others who use it a symbol of this country's lack of reconciliation/respect for the dead. Knowing this, it is likewise wrong and unfair to simply designate ALL Confederate soldiers, and their progeny, as treacherous traitors and losers. The Indigenous people, Africans, Immigrants, Women and the LGBT community are not the only people with an American Horror Story; some Southern Whites have one too. Lastly, the Confederate Flag, or any non-American flag be it the Rainbow, Jolly Roger, Pan-African, Christian, Nation of Islam or etc.., should not be flown over any city, county, state, government agency or public institution such as a public park, library or school. None of those flags represent this nation, the United States of America, and should only be flown on/over one's private property or worn on their person. All of this begs the questions we can only answer for ourselves: When there is clear disrespect for the dead, how can there be respect for the living? If our ancestors are not buried [resting] in peace, how can we live in peace? All of us have family and friends who have passed away. Some of us may still be grieving behind their passing and how their burial was handled. Healing those wounds and bringing closure may require us to invest in a reinterment process; beginning with openly talking about that grief or feelings of disrespect and working together to strive to reconcile those issues. 

Peace,
Saladin