Lincoln, Spielberg: Movie Analysis

The fight for racial equality has continued for more than 100 years,. In the movie Lincoln, Spielberg portrays part of the struggle the African Americans faced, and the first milestone: The passing into law of the 13th amendment, which ended involuntary servitude and the civil war. Being the sixteenth president of the USA, Lincoln was eager to end the war and end the racial inequality that existed at the time. Similarly in the movie Selma, the fight for equality is still present, as segregation existed before the civil rights act of 1964. Unfortunately, even after the act was passed and Martin Luther King won the noble peace prize for the ban of segregation, people needed time to absorb the change especially in the southern states. While both movies share a lot in common, a lot of differences exist. Like Lincoln, Selma is about the procedures of political maneuvering that allowed the

Lincoln is more of a fight for the 13th amendment and offers us an idea on how Republicans struggled to pass the vote. They needed twenty percent of Democrats and all the republicans. Even getting the republicans to support the amendment was a challenge. However, we fail to see how the African American is playing a role in this movie, they appear in the background while white men give them their rights. After a long period of negotiations, President Lincoln was able to pass the 13th amendment under a congress that didn’t have southern representation. The movie mentions that they even wanted to pass racial equality (14th amendment), but at the time it felt impossible. The house of representative is seen a very chaotic place, where the end justifies the means. While in Selma, Martin Luther King has met with President Johnson, trying to influence him, but the former is busily embroiled in Vietnam. Their scenes and President Johnson’s scenes with J. Hoover show the political tactics needed to bring