There will be some who flip past TNT next Sunday at 7pm Eastern, dismissing the movie Freedom Song as Yet Another Attempt by a White-owned media outlet to "cash in" on Black History Month before our 29 days are up. There will be others who will quickly change the channel because they're sick and tired of seeing "free at last" movies ["Are you people still on that issue? Haven't we gotten past that yet? Haven't you all Overcome by now?"].
My response to the latter would be to mention a little something called Schindler's List. And to the former, I say, put the remote down and have a seat. You just might learn a little something; and even if you don't learn something new, at least you'll remember something you may have forgotten.
THE STORY (WARNING: spoilers contained below)
"If not me, who? If not now, when?"
This is the question asked of Owen Walker (Vicellous Reon Shannon), a Black teen growing up in Mississippi during the 1960s - a time when Jim Crow segregation laws were not only legal, they were looked on by many Whites as being "the way God wanted it".
Owen's involvement in the civil rights movement begins when, as a young child in 1949, he wanders into the waiting room of a bus terminal - a waiting room marked "Whites Only". For this "crime", a racist White man sitting in the waiting room forces Owen's father Will (Danny Glover) to spank Owen, against Will's wishes. This is a turning point in Owen's life - as he said, the events prior to that during that summer day was his "last happy memory" as a child.
It's also a turning point in Will's life. Having come home from servicing in the military, Will was no longer content to accept the status quo, and tried to organize the Black vote. When they got wind of it, the Whites in his town conspired to put his gas station out of business. Knowing full well that he'd have to "go along to get along" - to insure the survival of his family - Will soon ended his efforts to fight for change in the community.
But not Owen; already not respecting Will for having, in his eyes, caved in to racism instead of fighting against it, Owen becomes "hungry for courage", and joins a burgeoning struggle for civil rights in his small town of Quinlan. Inspired by his Uncle Jonah (the magnificent John Beasley) and by the "Freedom Riders" he sees on TV, Owen dreams of the day that he can go back to that waiting room and get a small measure of revenge - even at the cost of his relationship with his father and mother Evelyn (Loretta Devine).
Others soon enter the movement, in different capacities. Local barber T-Bone Lanier (Glynn Turman), and fellow students Isaac Hawkins (Jason Weaver) and Dora Charles (Rae Ven Larrymore Kelly), are joined by members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group of older students who "join the crusade to desegregate Quinlin". Among the SNCC members helping the young students' efforts are Archie Mullen (Stan Shaw), Coleman Vaughnes (Michael Jai White), and Marcello Thedford (Tyrone Franklin). Peter Crowley (David Strathairn), a member of the U.S. Attorney General's Office (needless to say, a White man), also tries to help the growing movement. And in the quietest tour-de-force that I've ever had the pleasure to witness, Vondie Curtis Hall plays Daniel Wall, a French teacher from Chicago that becomes the focal point for the drive to register Black voters - a task that becomes increasingly harder to do as local White opposition builds against him and the group.
THE UPSHOT
I'll be the first to admit that hearing "We Shall Overcome" - in the voices of my soft, sated contemporaries - makes me angry. Partially, because it's sung with such little feeling and with so much ironic emptiness, by people who mouth the words without knowing the true meaning - but also because some forty years after the civil rights movement started in earnest, it should be "We HAVE Overcome". Yes, to some extent, We have; but it's the extent that We haven't - mostly, because We failed to remember the lessons our mothers and fathers taught us - that makes me the most angry. But that's another rant for another time; the tale told in Freedom Song predates the jadedness I sometimes feel about the lip service that's being done about the movement today.
This movie is so rich, and its story so historically important, that I find it difficult to narrow it down to a simple review. A few things do stand out in my mind, and are reinforced in the background info that was included with my tape.
The first thing was that this story, unlike others we've read about in history books and in class (after "our story" finally began to be taught in school, that is) is that it was told from the standpoint of "ordinary people doing extraordinary things"; in this, I got a much more personal connection with what was happening. Before there was Martin and Rosa - two who were and still are larger than life for many in the Black community - there were the unsung heroes who put their lives and their livelihood on the line, for what they thought was right; for what they thought was just. This sense of paying homage to those "little people" comes across powerfully in Freedom. It's as if King and Parks were "royalty", admired but somewhat untouchable, more a concept than a reality; but soft-spoken people like Daniel Wall, struggling against all odds to do what he thought was right, were "jus' folks" like you and me.
Another aspect that "hit me where I lived" was the portrayal of just what it meant to show non-violence in the violently charged atmosphere of racist rage. Two scenes in particular display this in full force: one involved the refreshingly good Michael Jai White; in a scene where his Coleman character speaks to Owen about the difference between being non-violent and practicing non-violence "as a political strategy, because it works," White showed off his physical and acting muscles. An earlier scene was even deeper: to prepare the teens for the ugly hatred and violence that they would surely face at a sit-in, the SNCC workers subjected the kids to a taste of the kinds of heinous speech and actions the racist Whites would pour on them. It is with no small sense of irony that I watched that scene; having heard much of the same kinds of filth spewing - for vastly different reasons - from modern-day Black characters such as the ones in 1999's Thicker Than Water, I truly wanted to cry from the bitterness that welled up in me.
There are, admittedly, some problems with this production. The whole of the civil rights movement, as portrayed in Freedom, seems to be simplistically narrowed down to Blacks not being allowed to register to vote or to sit in "Whites Only" cafeterias and bus stations [this, of course, doesn't include the beatings and killings of Blacks in the effort to vote or sit; contrary to the silly definition of some American laws, I don't consider murder a "violation of civil rights". Murder is murder, plain and simple]. By concentrating primarily on those two issues on an individual level - with emphasis especially on Owen's stubborn blindness about wanting to sit in the waiting room of his first experience with racism - the story almost trivializes the fullness of the struggle for civil rights, ending up making an unwitting "White Man's Ice Is Colder" statement (which is ironic in and of itself, considering a humorous scene at the end of the movie). Had this been based on a specific true incident, this wouldn't have been as problematic; but since this is a fictionalized account, this weakness is more pronounced.
It also doesn't help that there's a sense of repetition, especially in Owen's scenes; with the caveat firmly in place that I'm reviewing the unfinished press version, this movie could definitely stand some tighter editing. As for Owen's role, while I like the power that Shannon brings to it, his constant screen-time and Owen's one-note characterization, detracts from other key players - notably Glover and Devine, both of whom I was anxious to see more of, and sad that their own stories of struggle were not given as much "play". Without those seasoned actors providing more of Will and Evelyn's grayshades view of the reality of Living While Black in states like Mississippi in the 1960s, the viewer was left with an overabundance of the non-subtle black and white broadstrokes painted by the majority of the characters.
Still, even with these and other minor problems, Freedom Song remains a powerful movie about a period that some people want to forget - and other people never can.
A PERSONAL REFLECTION
Some Americans mark their passage into adulthood with the ability to drive a car. Some, when they finally could go to the bar, legally. For me, I knew I was an adult when I signed up to vote. It meant something, something very real to me, when I knew I could pull a lever, and - regardless to what the jaded observers of Our Life And Times tried to tell me - I could make a difference in the way my block, or city, or county, state, or country, was run. For many years, I believed that, and made sure I voted every chance I got. Something happened somewhere down the line, and I found myself voting only for the "big" stuff - and at times, not even remembering to do that. The movie Freedom Song was written for folks like me, who need a swift kick in the butt to make us remember.
As difficult as it is to deal with the crooked politicians, with their lies and their fake smiles, with the knowledge that they only really care about The People when it comes time for elections (and even then, only The People with The Money) - even knowing all of that, I remain firmly convinced that we, all of us, owe it to those whose thirst for freedom in THIS country led them to the ultimate sacrifice, to get up off our lazy, spoiled-by-relative-success asses, and vote. And MAKE our elected politicians work for all of us, for once.
BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE
"Those who forget history, are doomed to repeat it". The thoughts and deeds behind the film Freedom Song admonishes us to not forget it, even when that means holding your nose, getting your butt up, and registering to vote. And more: doing something about the conditions that lead many of us - "us" being people of all colors - to feel that we no longer vote for anyone, we only vote against something more "evil" than the other choice. But vote, we should. The memories of our forbears, many of whom were beaten and killed for the right to vote, demands it.
FREEDOM SONG:
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