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It is a bitter irony, much noted by critics, that many films dealing with the civil-rights movement and its legacy—Mississippi Burning, Cry Freedom, and, most recently, Ghosts of Mississippi, to name three prominent examples—have minimized the role of black activists within their own movements while extolling the (at times fictitious) heroism of white people who came to their rescue. But what is equally true, and not so frequently noted, is how these films secularize their white heroes and, through them, the process of racial reconciliation. If religion is visible at all, it is typically found among racial minorities or on the lips of white villains.1
Ghosts of Mississippi is a classic case in point. The film tells the true story of Bobby DeLaughter, an attorney who successfully prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith in 1994 for murdering civil-rights activist Medgar Evers some 30 years before. In the film, the black activist and his family take a back seat to the white lawyer and his domestic troubles, while the film's only clearly articulated reference to religious belief comes in a racist rant of De La Beckwith's. But when I interviewed the real-life DeLaughter for a secular publication, he told several stories of the prayers that had been said by himself, by members of Evers's family, and even by the foreman of the jury. These prayers, he believed, helped bring the killer to justice, but there is no trace of them in the film.
So how does one restore religion in general, and Christianity in particular, to historical narratives such as these? For conservatives such as the Christian Film and Television Commission's Ted Baehr, the answer is, in effect, to seize control of the mainstream—that is, to return to the days when Christians assisted Hollywood in creating a central, homogenous, American myth. But in a world marked by increasingly diverse audiences and a proliferation of independent filmmakers, religion stands a greater chance of recognition if filmmakers are encouraged to broaden their minds in general and reflect the pluralism—ethnic, religious, and otherwise—that already exists.
It is in this respect that Steven Spielberg's Amistad proves particularly interesting. Amistad is a mainstream film, with impeccable production values and recognizable actors. But as the first film Spielberg has directed for DreamWorks, the studio he cofounded four years ago with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, it also enjoys some of the artistic freedom one associates with an independent film. And it is this mix of the mainstream and the marginal that marks Spielberg's curious interpretation of a pivotal moment in the history of American racial and religious politics.
The basic facts are thus: In the summer of 1839, in the coastal waters of Cuba, 53 slaves on board a schooner named La Amistad (Spanish for "friendship") broke free one night and killed all of the crew but for Jose Ruiz and Pedros Montes, their nominal owners. The boat was then captured by American naval officers, who promptly claimed "salvage rights" over the slaves. Ruiz and Montes also claimed the slaves, as did the Spanish government, while the American courts pondered whether or not it was within their jurisdiction to deal with the matter at all.
Into this bewildering array stepped an abolitionist coalition led by Lewis Tappan, a wealthy, devoutly evangelical New York merchant. Tappan saw in the Amistad slaves an opportunity to generate sympathy for his cause and, should the slaves be freed, an opportunity to begin missionary work in Africa. For his part, President Martin Van Buren went out of his way to appease the Spanish government, encouraging Judge Andrew T. Judson to send the slaves back to Cuba on a boat he had already prepared, should the proper verdict be rendered. Van Buren did this to keep the approval of the southern states on the eve of his re-election campaign, but to some it appeared that he was "tampering with our courts of justice,"2 and this ultimately became a factor in Van Buren's defeat in the 1840 election.
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