Calls for ‘The Woman King’ to Be Boycotted Amid Slave Trade Criticism

Viola Davis‘ new movie has sparked a fierce debate about Hollywood covering hard truths through a lens — including slavery … resulting in some calling for a boycott of this one.

“The Woman King” hit theaters this weekend, but almost as quickly as the hype for the flick started soaring … the pushback also began — with some calling for an outright shunning because of what they perceive as whitewashing the history of the subjects depicted.

The criticism … the African tribe shown on screen, the Dahomey, as well as their all-female military regiment, the Agodjie, are presented as righteous, empowering liberators in all the marketing thus far … when in reality, they were knee-deep in the Atlantic slave trade.

The record isn’t pretty … Dahomey was one of a handful of tribes in the 17th/18th/19th centuries that captured and sold off Black slaves to Europeans — a means of trade they continued for a good while … until the Brits actually forced them to stop in the mid-1800s.

The trailer doesn’t allude to any of this whatsoever … it just shows Viola training a new wave of recruits for the Agodjie and battling against what appear to be white colonizers in a showdown. {snip}

{snip}