If you were among those who complained that Spielberg's
Lincoln focused too much on Abe and not those who came before, and around, him in fighting slavery, you might want to not miss three-part PBS series starting tomorrow, "The Abolitionists." Probably may not satisfy
Django fans, though. Here's
NYT review tonight.
The program, so rich in well-staged
re-enactments that it is more docudrama than documentary, traces the
abolitionist movement across almost 40 tumultuous years, a period of
colliding worldviews that makes our current polarization seem slight.
The focus is on five prominent figures with a lifelong dedication to the cause: Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe
and John Brown. That oversimplifies things considerably, of course — it
takes more than five people to move a mountain — but the principals are
well chosen in that they represent a range of approaches as to how best
to rid the country of slavery.
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