Meeting David Wilson

Friday evening, I saw MSNBC premier a documentary called, “Meeting David Wilson”. It was the story of a young African American man named David A. Wilson who had decided to trace his Southern roots back to slavery. He found that he was three generations removed from slavery. He also found that there was a descendant of the family who owned him named David B. Wilson.

He ponders whether he wants to meet him, and interviews black people for their opinions about slavery. A lot of them say that they couldn’t meet a descendant of the family who owned them because they would be too angry. Before David A. meets David B., he works in a tobacco field, doing the labor that slaves would have done.

After being totally wiped out by the back breaking labor, he meets David B. Wilson and learns of his life in the North Carolina town where David A’s ancestors worked the land. He gets the opportunity to visit David B’s barbecue pork restaurant, Short Sugar’s. He also has a very real talk with David B. about slavery and asks his views on the subject. The one thing I respected most about the film was the reality of the conversation that took place. David later has his dna checked to see if he is related to the other wilson family. He is not, but he discovers that his family originated from Ghana. David goes to Ghana and sees the door of no return, the passage through which slaves were forced onto ships headed for the new world.

The film ends with David speaking with young students about his experience. After the film, a panel was held to discuss race. While I’m pretty ambivalent where such panels are concerned, I really appreciated the honesty of the film. I think that it should be required viewing for schoolchildren.