Reeling Back

Art can make a difference. American attitudes toward slavery, shaped by the publication on this day (March 20) of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, led to the founding on this day in 1854) of a Republican party that opposed the "peculiar institution's" spread into the western territories. When the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, met Stowe in 1862, he is said to have called her “the little lady who made this big (U.S. civil) war.” Artists can make a difference. Keenly aware of his nation’s racist history, independent movie-maker Spike Lee named his production company Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, an ironic echo of a Reconstruction era land-redistribution policy that ended in the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination. Its corporate logo includes black activist Malcolm X’s phrase “By Any Means Necessary,” to underscore Lee’s dedication to the ongoing struggle for equality. Born on this day in 1957, he uses the film medium to tell the truth as he sees it. Nor does he mince words in his criticism of today’s white-supremacist Republican party. Musing on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Lee says Donald Trump “will go down in history with the likes of Hitler.” Today, we’ll add four uncompromisingly direct Spike Lee titles to the Reeling Back archive (with links to each following the Afterword to this posting). Our package includes his still-relevant examination of effects of racism on American society, 1989’s Do the Right Thing.