Henry Louis Gates's fawning, slavering, unctious bootlicking may have offended Ben Affleck. It offends anyone with a sense of honor, starting with real veterans of Freedom Rides. Ben Affleck's mother can only have been humiliated by false glorification which she did not need: she was already an admirable woman. What do you make of a Harvard Professor who abases himself with lies to flatter a movie star? Well, not one PBS should have retained. Now PBS prostitutes itself and betrays all the people who have sent money to PBS over the years. The decision to renew Gates as master of ceremonies, even with watchdogs to make him more nearly honest, was suicidal of PBS. Better they should have renewed with Brian Williams.
Daniel
Nussbaum
PBS
documentary Finding Your Roots, already under internal review over
claims it censored information about Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestors out
of a recent episode, has again come under fire for inaccuracies after Affleck’s
mother denied she was ever involved in the 1964 Freedom Summer.
In Affleck’s segment on the
ancestry-themed documentary program, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells the actor
that his mother, Chris Boldt, was an activist involved in Freedom Summer, the
historic voter-registration drive among Mississippi’s African-American
community in 1964.
Promotional materials for Affleck’s
episode on the PBS website included the line: “Ben Affleck’s mother was a
Freedom Rider in 1964.”
“A lynch mob made up of members of
the Klan and the local sheriff’s department pulled over three of Ben’s mom’s
fellow activists,” Gates tells Affleck on the program. “This is not some
abstract threat. The Klan actually murdered these three Freedom Riders. And
your mother was there at that time.”
Chris Affleck, now 72, told the Daily Mail
this week that her “heart was with” the Freedom Riders, but that she was never
a member of the group. According to the outlet, Mrs. Affleck was not even in
the South in 1964, but one year later instead.
“I supported what they did,” she
told the Mail. “People have incorrectly said I was a member, which
embarrasses me because I wasn’t as good as they were.”
PBS announced this week that it
would conduct an “internal review” to ensure
the network did not violate its editorial guidelines. In a statement to
Breitbart News on Friday, PBS said the network is “still conducting our
internal review. We will share findings once it is concluded.”
PBS, Gates, and Affleck came under
fire last week after a leaked email exchange between Gates and Sony CEO Michael
Lynton revealed that Affleck had asked Gates to censor information about a
slave-owning ancestor out of the program.
Affleck apologized this week on
social media for requesting the edit, saying he was “embarrassed” and that he
regretted his “initial thoughts that the issue of slavery not be included in
the story.”
Affleck’s mother told the Mail
that her son’s apology made her “proud.”
“I wasn’t surprised to find that my
family had used black people as slaves,” Mrs. Affleck told the outlet. “It
makes sense. It was all on my side of the family because my parents were from
Georgia and Mississippi and many rich white people from southern states would
use people in this way.”
“I know in my heart that it was
wrong, but I had no exact knowledge until now,” she added. “But I am not
surprised or shocked, although it doesn’t make you feel good at all.”
In a statement issued shortly after
the exchange became public, Gates still apparently believed that Affleck’s
mother was a Freedom Rider.
“Ultimately, I maintain editorial
control on all of my projects and, with my producers, decide what will make for
the most compelling program,” Gates said. “In the case of Mr. Affleck – we
focused on what we felt were the most interesting aspects of his ancestry –
including a Revolutionary War ancestor, a 3rd great-grandfather who was an
occult enthusiast, and his mother who marched for Civil Rights during the
Freedom Summer of 1964.”
In the original transcript of
Affleck’s segment on the program, obtained by Gawker, Gates tells Affleck
it’s “cool” that the actor’s mother “went back fighting for the rights of black
people in Mississippi, 100 years later. That’s amazing.”
On Wednesday, Affleck revealed the name of his
slave-owning great-grandfather on Twitter: Benjamin Cole, who reportedly owned
25 slaves as the wealthy sheriff of Savannah, Georgia.
This is the 1996 application. Scott Syfert on the 20th of May (MecDec) site is posting great pictures--and verifying that this is the Hopewell Church Grandpa helped build!