Runaway Slave

I recently watched the movie Runaway Slave as it is now available to watch On Demand by many cable providers.  It is an inspirational movie about C.L. Bryant’s journey from former NAACP local chapter president to Tea Party participant, and his journey across America to find others who are running from the government plantation of entitlements.  Along the way, he finds many black conservatives.  I will give you a brief introduction to some of them here.  Others that are mentioned have links embedded where you can learn more about them.  Remember, knowledge is power.  The truth sets us free.

Mason Weaver, author of “It’s Okay to Leave the Plantation”.  Weaver says:

Freedom will not protect you.  You must protect freedom…  Liberals are very good at managing poverty, very good at making you comfortable with poverty…  I began to realize that if you are a liberal politician, you did not want your community to ever get prosperous.

Michael McNeely, Chairman of the Georgia Black Republican Council, states:

Who’s really on the plantation?  Is it Democrats or Republicans?  Conservative or Liberal?  Because Conservatives say ‘I don’t need government.  I don’t need a handout.  I can do it for myself.’  While Democrats say, ‘Government, come on in.  I can’t pay my mortgage, you pay it for me.’  No, we want to be independent.  We want to be left alone to make our own way.  We’re not responsible for how we’re born.  But, we are responsible for how we die.

Alphonzo Rachel, David Webb, and Allen West.  West recently touched upon what America is about in a speech in Florida:

Here, in this land of dreams that we call America, it is about your individual sovereignty.

Dr. Thomas Sowell,  who has studied and taught economics, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions that include Cornell University, UCLA, and Amherst College. He is now a part of the Hoover Institution.  Sowell has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is a revised and updated edition of his classic volume, Basic Economics.  One of my favorite Sowell quotes:

Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?

During Bryant’s journey, we are also introduced K. Carl Smith who explains why he is a Frederick Douglass Republican:

I am a Frederick Douglass Republican because the life-empowering message that Douglass advocated aligns with my personal values: (1) Respect for the Constitution; (2) Respect for Life; (3) Believe in Limited Government; and (4) Belief in Personal Responsibility.

We meet Teresa Chappell, Rich Thompson, and Herman Cain.

Kevin Daniels, Catherine Davis, and Stephen Broden.

Lisa Fritsch and Jesse Lee Peterson.

Deneen Borelli, Sonja Schmidt, and Erik Rush.  Rush is the author of the book, “Negrophilia:  From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession”.  The book “studies the undue and inordinate affinity for blacks (as opposed to antipathy toward them) that has been promoted by activists, politicians and the establishment press for the past 40 years and which has fostered an erroneous perception of blacks, particularly in America.”

During the movie, Marvin Rogers illustrates the history the Republican Party and it’s involvement with civil rights in America.  He speaks about the founding of the Republican Party in 1854 as it was born as an abolitionist party.  The first Republican platform that was written said:

 We believe that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.

Rogers goes on to speak about the Republican Party being responsible for the passing of the XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments to the Constitution that made slavery illegal, granted citizenship and due process of law to former slaves and blacks, and granted blacks the right to vote.

One very enlightening item that Rogers speaks about is the Civil Rights bill of 1957 that was opposed by Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy.  Johnson at the time said:

These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days, and that’s a problem for us, since they’ve got something now they never had before:  the political pull to back up their uppityness.  Now we’ve got to do something about this – we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.

Kennedy also voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

During Runaway Slave, we get to meet Dr. Alveda King, who speaks about her Republican uncle, Martin Luther King Jr., and that we hope to live in a country where we “are judged not by the color of [our] skin, but the content of [our] character.”

Multiple times during the film, we hear from the author of “Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can Do About It”, Star Parker.

Ron Miller, author of “Sellout Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch”, who strives to get the black community to “reject resentment and  victimhood” and to “embrace individual liberty and entrepreneurship”.

William Owens, VP of Tea Party Review Magazine.  Charlotte Bergmann, who advocates for entrepreneurship and small businesses.

Bryant spends time interviewing people on the street.  He asks one unnamed black person with an African accent, “I have noticed that most Africans who come to this country don’t necessarily want to associate themselves with the American black.  Why is that?”  The man answers,

They believe we have lost our footage…  And they can’t understand how people in America, how they can still be enslaved in their minds in this day in time when freedom is all around you.

Armstrong Williams and Andre Harper.  Harper is the author of “The Citizen’s Guide to Defeating the Mainstream Media” and “Political Emancipation”.  We meet Vanessa Louis who is an urban conservative activist.

The film repeatedly speaks to the principles of economic freedom.  Individual liberty and personal responsibility.  It represents well Frederick Douglass, former slave, who once said:

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

The film reviews the history of Harriet Tubman who was a former slave who escaped.  Yet she returned to the slave states numerous times to lead other slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.   If only we had Tubman alive today.  The black conservatives in this film take on Tubman’s cause, and they can only agree with what Tubman said so many years ago:

I freed a thousand slaves.  I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.