Let’s Unpack This

Slavery, Apparently, Isn’t Dead

In small corners of America, Black people are still in chains

Garfield Hylton
Momentum
Published in
4 min readJun 8, 2021

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Modern-day slavery is, sadly, not dead. Photo: Hands try to break free of chains, Getty Images

In 2020, Janelle Monae starred in the horror film Antebellum playing a Black woman who was kidnapped by White people, smuggled into a Confederate camp, and forced to live as a slave. At different parts of the movie, viewers see Monae’s life as a modern woman juxtaposed with her time in captivity.

Her life as a modern woman is set in the present day, and the captivity scenes are set in what appears to be the Civil War era. But Antebellum’s plot twist is that both time periods are the same. What’s revealed is that her kidnappers attacked her and brought her to a Civil War reenactment. It’s a fun bit of “role-playing” for the captors but deadly consequences for Monae’s character and the other kidnapped Black people on the plantation.

Monae eventually escapes the camp, kills her captors, and rides through a Confederate battle toward freedom. Gerard Bush, a co-director of the movie, said the idea was inspired by a nightmare he had, presumably about being enslaved. Antebellum’s plot of modern-day White people forcing Black people into slavery might feel like fantasy, but something similar happened to a Black man named John Christopher Smith in South Carolina as late as 2014.

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Garfield Hylton
Momentum

Medium Creator Fellow. Award-winning TV news journalist. Freelance writer. Mad question asker.