‘The 13th’ by Ava DuVernay  

Condensed

“The 13th” relives the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow and Lynchings. After this history, the film becomes a lot of propaganda, hysterical exaggerations and outright lies. In addition to the 13th amendment “loophole,” whites have now invented new ways to arrest blacks through law and order legislation - the 1994 crime bill, minimum sentencing and the war on drugs. This is a conspiracy film were the conspiracy is all made up.

Another flaw in this film is the repeated fraudulent attempts to link conditions that existed 50 or 150 years ago to conditions that exist today. There is no linkage and attempting to do so gives this film zero credibility. DuVernay wants to convince blacks that they live under systemic oppression and their situation is hopeless. All the songs in this film proclaim black victimhood and hopelessness.

This film should be labeled a hate film since its obvious goal is to incite anger and rage against today’s whites for the sins of the past by a minority of whites. This film makes liberal use of domestic terrorists and liberal activists on the political fringe to ‘prove’ their narratives.

It’s important to note that only about 30% of whites owned slaves prior to the Civil War in the South and blacks also owned slaves - 3,776 free Negroes owned 12,907 slaves.(2) 

America INHERITED slavery from the British and then fought a horrific Civil War to end slavery. The U.S. is responsible for slavery from 1781 to 1865. From 1619 to 1781, the British were responsible. In Jefferson’s initial draft of the Declaration of Independence in June, 1776, he included a 168 word passage that blamed King George for his role in creating and perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade and condemned slavery as one of the many evils foisted upon the colonies by the British crown. The passage was cut from the final wording.(3)  Over time, America and Britain led the way in abolishing slavery around the world.

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4:14 - The film claims the negative views of blacks lead to a mythology of black criminality. Sadly, black criminality is not a myth, although this film spends one hour and 40 minutes attempting to prove otherwise. The movie’s solution is to stop showing so many black criminals in the news. 

Crime statistics don’t lie. The high crime rates of black violence are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination. 

Some crime stats:

*  “In 1921-22, the homicide rates in Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans per 100,000 Negro population were 103.2, 97.2, 116.9, and 46.7 respectively, while the corresponding rates for the white population were 15.0, 28.0, 29.6, and 8.4.” (4)

*  Homicide figures for Atlanta in 1931 show 106 Negros murdered. Seventy-six were killed by other Negros, 11 killed by policemen and 9 by whites. The other 10 were unknown. (4)

*  From 1980 to 2013, 2,269 police officers were murdered. The racial breakdown of their murderers shows that 41 percent were black - although blacks comprise only 13% of the population.(5)

*  Blacks committed 52 per cent of all homicides between 1980 and 2008 - even though blacks are only 13 percent of the population.(6) 

*  In 2015, 51.1% of people arrested for homicide were African American, even though African American people account for only 13% of the U.S. population.(7)

This film is useless in solving any of our racial issues because it denies the reality of black crime and black attitudes. Black crime leads people to view young black males with suspicion.———————————————————————

7:33 - This is deliberately a shock movie designed to arouse anger, with graphic photos and video of lynchings, murders and attacks on blacks. From 1882 to1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. What is NOT told in this film is that 27.3% of all people lynched were white - or 1,297 lynched. The most common reason for lynchings was murder and rape.(8) 

Some have called the period of lynchings between 1880 and 1950 the Negro Holocaust. This is absolutely NOT true. There were 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany over a 5 year period during World War Two. About 3,500 blacks were lynched over a 70 year period - and FAR more blacks were killed by fellow blacks during that time then by lynchings.

Since this film is so inflammatory and one-sided, we should expose horrific crimes against whites by blacks:

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*  August 11, 2020 - A black man, Darius Sessoms, ran up to Cannon Hinnant, a 5 YEAR OLD white boy in N. Carolina and shot him in the head in his father’s driveway - killing him. Sessoms was arrested the next day. Aolani Takemi Marie Pettit, 21, was also arrested and charged with felony accessory after the fact.(9)

*  Channon Christian, a 21-year-old University of Tennessee student, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, were heading out to a friend's birthday party on the night of Jan. 06, 2007 when they were ambushed and carjacked in the parking lot of a North Knoxville apartment complex by five blacks - four males and one female.

They were taken in Christian's car to a rental house in East Knoxville where the group's ringleader, Lemaricus Davidson, lived.

Both victims were beaten, raped and tortured. Newsom was executed within a few hours of the abduction and his body set on fire. Christian is believed to have been held captive for another 24 hours, during which she was repeatedly assaulted. She was wrapped in garbage bags, stuffed inside a trash can and slowly suffocated to death.(10)

Of all the lies in this movie, DuVernay saves the biggest lie for the end. The film ends with Bryan Stevenson, Founder, Equal Justice Initiative, saying: “People say all the time, I don’t understand how people could have tolerated slavery, how could they have made peace with that. How could people have gone to a lynching, and participated in that. How did people make sense of this segregation, this white and colored only drinking fountain - that’s so crazy. If I was living at that time I would have never tolerated anything like that. AND THE TRUTH IS - WE ARE LIVING IT THIS TIME, AND WE ARE TOLERATING IT.”

So Stevenson is claiming that conditions today are like slavery, lynchings or Jim Crow. Insane statements like this proves there will never be racial harmony because blacks refuse to give up their victimhood.

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*  A video of ‘civil rights’ leader Al Sharpton encouraging blacks to kill crackers (white people) and pigs (cops).(15)

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*  A modern day Hitler wannabe - Kamau Kambon - taught Africana Studies in the Spring 2005 semester at North Carolina State University. Kambon told his audience at Howard University Law School in 2005 that the solution to racial issues is to exterminate white people off the face of the planet - and some in the audience clapped.(16)     

3:15 - Jelani Cobb asks what do you do with 4 millions former slaves who are now free. 

Blacks faced many challenges as a free people:

“Slavery left the Negro illiterate and untrained for the responsibilities of freedom.”(20) “Unfortunately for the Negroes freedom meant the loss of certain attentions which they received in slavery, designed to keep them healthy and clean and to prolong their lives.”(20)

Blacks were NOT abandoned after the Civil War. The Freedmen’s Bureau’s was formed on March 3, 1865 and lasted until 1872. Both freed slaves and the Freedmen’s Bureau officials agreed that education was top priority. Prior to the Civil War, no southern state had a system of universal, state-supported public education and prohibited slaves and free blacks from gaining an education. Now former slaves went to school.

The Freedman’s Bureau spent $5 million to set up schools for blacks. By the end of 1865, more than 90,000 former slaves were enrolled as students in such public schools. By 1870, there were more than 1,000 schools for freedmen in the South.(21)  In 1870 the illiteracy rate among the non-white population was 80 percent. By 1890, it was down to 57 percent and by 1910 it had dropped to 30 percent.(22) 

Abolitionists worked to help blacks even before the Civil War. The first historically black colleges (HBCUs) were Cheyney University of Pennsylvania in 1837, University of the District of Columbia in 1851, Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) in 1854 and Wilberforce University in 1856 (Ohio). LeMoyne-Owen College was founded during the Civil War in 1862 for freed and escaped slaves in Tennessee.

Other colleges founded shortly after the Civil War were Alabama State University in 1867, Allen University in 1870 (S. Carolina), Barber-Scotia College in 1867 (N. Carolina), Benedict College in 1870 (S. Carolina), Bowie State University in 1865 (Maryland), Claflin University in 1869 (S. Carolina), Clark Atlanta University in 1865 (Georgia), Dillard University in 1869 (Louisiana), Edward Waters College in 1866 (Florida), Fayetteville State University in 1867 (N. Carolina), Fisk University in 1866 (Tennessee), Hampton University in 1868 (Virginia), Howard University in 1867 (Washington DC), Johnson C. Smith University in 1867 (N. Carolina), Lincoln University of Missouri in 1866, Morehouse College in 1867 (Georgia), Morgan State University in 1867 (Maryland), Rust College in 1866 (Missouri), Shaw University in 1865 (N. Carolina), St. Augustine's University in 1867 (N. Carolina), Talladega College in 1867, (Alabama), Tougaloo College in 1869 (Mississippi) and Virginia Union University in 1865. Some of these colleges were founded with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau. Many other Universities were founded primarily to educate blacks after 1870. 

The first Freedmen’s Bureau Act in 1865 included plans for 40-acre tracts to be sold on easy terms to former slaves. Following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson unwisely terminated this program. Many blacks today believe EVERY family would have gotten 40 acres - which is not accurate. The original plan called for seizing 400,000 acres along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and selling tracts to former slaves - divided into 40 acre parcels to create 10,000 farms. This land distribution would have helped 10,000 families and the people they hired get a fresh start. This program would have benefited about two to three percent of the 4 million freed slaves.  

4:35 - The movie ‘Birth of a Nation: 

The racist 1915 film ‘Birth of a Nation’ by D. W. Griffith was a propaganda film utterly demeaning to blacks. This film had a negative effect on race relations primarily in the south. The animosity this film produced caused millions of blacks to move from the south to other parts of the country after 1916. 

Kevin Gannon claims “Birth of a Nation confirmed the story that many whites wanted to tell about the Civil War and its aftermath. To erase defeat and take out of it sort of a martyrdom.” Virtually no one in the North believed this fraudulent history. Certainly there were people in the South who didn’t either.

Gannon noted that “Woodrow Wilson, the sitting president, had a private screening of Birth of a Nation in the White House. Gannon claims Wilson called the movie ‘history written with lightening.’”

It’s very important to debunk anti-black propaganda, but it’s also important to debunk anti-white propaganda. Accusations need to be based on solid evidence. Although Woodrow Wilson was a staunch segregationist, it is doubtful Wilson ever said this, so this quote should not have been used.  Also, Gannon fails to mention the showing at the White House was by chance.

In Jan. 1915 Dixon, who knew Wilson when they were at John Hopkins University wrote to Wilson’s secretary and asked if he could have a half-hour appointment with the president. The appointment was set for Feb. 3. Dixon did not specify what he wanted to discuss with Wilson, only that he was working on a new powerful form of communication.

At their meeting, Dixon asked Wilson if he would watch a new historic film he was making. Wilson’s wife had died the previous August and he felt it would be inappropriate to go to the theater. Wilson told Dixon he could show his film at the White House and Dixon quickly agreed. Birth of a Nation was shown at the White House on Feb. 18, 1915. The attendees include Wilson, his daughter Margaret, several cabinet members and their families and a few friends. Dixon and the film’s Director/Producer D. W. Griffith were also present.  

Wilson’s controversial remark was supposedly uttered at the end of his private showing. No one in the audience who later wrote memoirs or diaries recorded that Wilson made the ‘history like lightning’ quote.

As violence against showing the film grew, Wilson came under political pressure to denounce the movie. In late April, 1915, Wilson issued this statement: “It is true that ‘The Birth of a Nation’ was produced before the President and his family at the White House, but the President was entirely unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation [approval, praise] of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance.” (25)

*  In Detroit, in Sep 2016, an 18-year-old black man - George Steward - was sentenced to 30 and 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Authorities say Steward beat 91 year old Paul Monchnik to death. Steward then doused the World War Two veteran with gasoline before setting him on fire last November. Steward lived next door to Monchnik with his grandfather, family members say. His motive is unknown.

Steward’s family is as twisted as he is. Outside of court, Steward’s family and friends defended him. His sister, Taige Steward, said her brother was not a “monster” and had never been in trouble before this murder. “I feel sorry for the family and for my family as well, because we are all going through,” Steward said. “I know he honestly feels terrible about what happened.”(32)

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In May, 2020, a white Army veteran, Paul Marino, 86, and his wife Lidia, 85 were executed by a black man in a random act of violence while visiting their son's grave at the Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery. Sheldon C. Francis walked up behind the couple and shot them in the back of the head.

Delaware State Police shot and killed Francis during a protracted shootout in which a total of at least 150 rounds were fired. Francis fired at least 78 rounds at police.(33)  

13:38 - After the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws had been passed, crime began to rise. Michelle Alexander claims whites believed that blacks who now had full freedom would repay society with crime. In many ways, they did. There were 159 race riots across the U.S in 1967. 

Escalating gang violence made life in cities more fearful. Once nice neighborhoods became dangerous neighborhoods due to increasing crime. One example is Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, who was convicted of murder in Paterson, NJ in 1967:

"We were looked upon as a rough, menacing phalanx, an anti-social mob. To live up to this reputation, I must admit, we performed deeds that one might easily classify as being against the best interests of society. But we were Apaches-so we raided the enemies' neighborhoods, fought to a standstill the marauding gangs that violated our territorial boundaries, and pillaged the downtown market places."

"One day, while returning home from the movies, we decided to perform a feat of daring. There were about fifteen or twenty Apaches along, since the movie house was situated in enemy territory and we needed a show of force to deter any possible attack. We were approaching a store that had racks and racks of clothing displayed outside on the sidewalk. The object of each Apache was to run past the display, grab as much of the merchandise as he could handle, and then escape without getting caught."(34)

18:00 - Film quotes Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” 

Noted writer Dan Baum (1956-2020) interviewed Ehrlichman in 1994 when he allegedly made this statement but never publicized this statement until 2012 - 18 years later and 13 years after Ehrlichman died. It is doubtful Ehrlichman ever said this, so this quote should not have been used. But of course this is a propaganda film.

There is no known recording of this conversation. Baum tracked down Ehrlichman for an interview. Any good reporter would have audio of an interview, especially one as important as this.(35) 

There was no legitimate reason for Baum to leave this quote out of this 1997 book "Smoke and Mirrors," which is all about the failed war on drugs. He feebly claimed it didn’t fit with the book’s narrative style, according to CNN.  But Baum DID use the quote in 2012 in the book  “The Moment,” a collection of stories about moments that changed writers’ lives. It was now safe for Baum to report this alleged quote since Ehrlichman died in 1999 and couldn’t dispute Baum’s claims.

Ehrlichman’s 5 children don’t believe their father said it. "The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him. We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond.”(36)

Former Nixon officials don’t believe Ehrlichman made this comment. “The comments being attributed to John Ehrlichman in recent news coverage about the Nixon administration’s efforts to combat the drug crisis of the 1960’s and 70’s reflect neither our memory of John nor the administration’s approach to that problem,” wrote Jeffrey Donfeld, Jerome H. Jaffe and Robert DuPont in a joint statement sent to The Huffington Post in March, 2016. (37)

President Ronald Reagan is then condemned by none other then domestic terrorist Angela Davis. Davis is a fierce defender of communist dictators and claimed the election of Ronald Reagan in Nov. 1980 was “transformative in a negative sense.” 

Davis claims Reagan launched a “frontal assault on institutions that are designed to assist human beings - the education system, welfare, jobs, health care.” (21:45) An unnamed voice in the film then announces that under Reagan, “the number of Americans dipping under the poverty level has reached the highest rate in two decades.” There is no way to know what time frame this anonymous speaker is refering to. Regardless, ALL of these allegations are LIES. Black leadership spent 8 years unfairly criticizing Reagan.

Reagan was president from January 1981 to January 1989.

In 1981 the poverty rate was 14%. In 1988 it was 13%  In 1965, the rate was 17.3% 

Jobs - Unemployment rate in November 1980 was 7.5%   In Nov. 1988 it was 5.3%

Inflation - Jan 1981 was 11.83% Inflation in Jan 1989 was 4.67% (38)

The economic lot for blacks and Hispanics improved far more than it did for whites after Reagan's steep tax cuts. In late 1982, Reagan's second year in office, the unemployment rate for blacks was 20.4 percent. By 1989, his last year, the black unemployment rate had fallen to 11.4 percent -- a 9 percent drop. In late 1982, the unemployment rate for Hispanics was 15.3 percent. By 1989, it had fallen to 8 percent -- a drop of over 7 percentage points. White unemployment, by contrast, fell "only" 4 percentage points.

What about black-owned businesses? In 1982, according to the Census Bureau, there were 308,000 black-owned businesses. By 1987, the number had increased to 424,000, up 38 percent. The number of all U.S. businesses was up "only" 14 percent. Receipts for black-owned businesses went from less than $10 billion to nearly $20 billion -- a 100 percent increase. (39)

Reagan did not gut welfare. Ronald Reagan recognized that the expansion of the welfare state was the greatest threat to the financial prosperity of the country and fighting it was a driving force throughout his political career.

California in 1971 was heading toward bankruptcy because of the massive growth in welfare spending. As Governor, Reagan discovered he was greatly hampered by federal welfare rules and policies. But Reagan was still able to achieve great savings for the state’s taxpayers and better serve the poor by focusing assistance to those most truly in need.

As a result of the tremendous savings generated by removing the non-needy from the welfare rolls, Ronald Reagan was able to INCREASE benefits to California’s most needy citizens in over a decade and a half. 

(31:00)  During the 1988 presidential race between George Bush and Michael Dukakis, Bush used an ad about a black criminal named Willie Horton to prove Dukakis was soft on crime. This ad propelled Bush to victory over Dukakis in the November, 1988 election. To this day, the ‘Willie Horton’ ad sends black activists and white liberals into a tizzy. WHY? Nothing in the ad was false.

On October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Willie Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a white 17-year-old gas station attendant. Although Fournier cooperated by handing over all the money in the cash register, Horton stabbed him 19 times and stuffed him in a trash can where he bled to death. Horton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On June 6, 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program supported by Dukakis but did not return. On April 3, 1987, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Horton twice raped a woman after pistol-whipping and knifing her fiancé in a home invasion. He then stole her fiance’s car. He was shot and captured by Maryland police and on October 20, Horton was sentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years. The sentencing judge, Vincent J. Femia, refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again." Horton is still in prison in Maryland.

In 1976, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill preventing murderers from being furloughed, but Dukakis vetoed the bill. When Horton’s victims attempted to meet with Dukakis to persuade him to eliminate the furlough program, he refused the meeting. In 1988, when Dukakis wanted to run for President, he quietly ended the furlough program.

The Willie Horton ad showed how soft Dukakis was on crime - he didn’t care about putting the public at risk.  This was a GREAT ad. Horton was the only inmate released that murdered someone. If Horton had been white, Bush would still have used the ad. It was not racial at all - it was factual. (40)

DuVernay attempts to link Horton’s brutal crimes to the lynching of an innocent black man for rape in the racist 1915 movie Birth of a Nation. This is another truely asinine comparison by DuVernay looking for any excuse to excuse black crime. Race hustlers like DuVernay incite black crime. Here some black crimes:

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*   April 7, 2021, a black male - former NFL pro Phillip Adams - killed Dr. Robert Lesslie, 70, and his wife, Barbara Lesslie, 69, along with Lesslie’s grandchildren - Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5. Adams also fatally gunned down two HVAC technicians working at the Lesslie home - all for no reason.

Adams then killed himself. Some have tried to excuse this massacre due to head injuries that a lot of football players and boxers suffer from. But they don't massacre people - especially children. He still knew right from wrong.(41)

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*  Feb 2021 - Antoine Watson, a 19 year old black man, ran up behind an 84-year-old Asian San Francisco resident - Vicha Ratanapakdee - and slammed him to the pavement, killing him. After Watson appeared in court, where he pled not guilty, Watson’s grandmother proved she was as clueless about right and wrong as he is. When asked outside the courtroom what she wanted to see happen to Antoine, Watson’s grandmother said, “To see him walk out this door like I’m walking out right now.” (42)