[thunder rumbles]
- [man grunting] - [whinnying]
[men shouting]
[man] Go on! Go on, you lazy nag!
Stop a moment!
[man] Go on!
Go on!
Wilber. Wilber, you're not well enough.
For once, let it pass.
- [man grunting] - [whinnying]
If you leave your horse alone for an hour, he might recover.
And who the hell are you?
[man] Hey.
I've seen him speak in London. That's William Wilberforce.
[whinnies]
- Now what? - Leave it.
- Welcome home, sir. - You're so late!
The mud stole half a day.
But Marianne, look. I have a surprise for you.
- I hope a pleasant one. - Wilber. Wilber, is that you?
Oh, it is, half of me. My idiotic body is playing games with me again.
- I promised we'd make him well. - Eat something.
Breakfast, perhaps. Not too early. I'm on holiday.
- Isn't that right, cousin Henry? - [chuckles]
Don't you talk to each other? Haven't you told him he's killing himself?
Now he's with us, he'll be fine.
[thunder rumbles]
[raucous laughter]
[knocking]
What time is it?
This is your 3 a.m. dose.
So, cousin, you're waking me up to give me medicine to help me sleep.
Ah. Now you're taking on the medical profession, as well as everyone else.
Did you sleep?
Sleep is more exhausting than being awake.
The laudanum will sharpen your dreams.
It replays my life to mock me and shows me things I should have done but didn't.
Wilber, Parliament doesn't deserve you.
Your last bill was defeated because four of your loyal supporters
took free tickets to a comic opera rather than stay to vote.
In my dreams, I turned over their tables.
But you know the worst thing? I can't sing any more.
You remember how well I used to sing?
Marianne and I will find a way to restore your voice.
[indistinct chatter]
[classical music plays]
The Romans believed this water would restore the dead to life.
Most pump water I've investigated works in the opposite direction.
So?
- What was so urgent? - Did I say it was urgent?
Marianne, are you expecting someone else?
Inside this building, you will find the secret of health and happy life.
In a glass of water?
You may have noticed,
since I married Marianne, I have been a picture of health.
- I'm very happy for you. - It is almost a scientific fact.
Marriage and health are twins. Inseparable.
Single men wither away and die in rooms that smell of feet and armpits.
Henry, what are you babbling on about?
Love, Wilberforce. Come. Come, we're late.
The water has been here a million years. How can we be late?
- So, what shall we discuss next? - I don't know.
The abolition of the slave trade. How about that?
Marianne, if I'd known you were so starved of political conversation,
I'd have wrapped up a Tory and sent him to your home by mail
for you to shout at.
Ah, now, look at that.
Here we are discussing the abolition of the slave trade
and in walks my husband with William Wilberforce himself,
the most committed abolitionist in England and also, of course,
the most unmarried.
Oh. Look over there. It's Marianne.
And who's the charming-Iooking woman with her?
- Marianne's here? - Never mind about her.
Look at the woman she's with. Barbara Spooner.
Very committed to very many good causes.
And also entirely unmarried.
Marianne, you're outrageous!
I do not need you or anyone else to find a wife for me!
[thunder rumbles]
[man] Carriage! Carriage over here.
- I'll never forgive him. - I'll never forgive her.
However, Mr Wilberforce, if we had met in other circumstances,
I would have told you how deeply I admire your tireless efforts
to force our ridiculous Parliament to abolish the slave trade.
If you had, I would have changed the subject and talked about botany.
Botany? Why botany?
Anything but politics. I'm in Bath to be cured of politics.
Well, I would have been bored by botany.
So, even in other circumstances, it would have been a disaster.
- Good day to you. - Good day to you.
- [chains rattle] - [fire crackles]
[Wilberforce] Some simple truths about this horrendous war
need to be restated for the benefit of my honourable friends.
Simple fact. We have the rebels on the anvil and a hammer in our hands.
[cheering]
There is no question that our military force
is far superior to that of the Americans.
But we must distinguish between force and justice.
Where did this terrier spring from?
I believe he's a Yorkshire terrier, My Lord.
[Wilberforce]... rather than able statesmen.
Surely it is time for the fat fellow and his friends opposite
to make way for others who consider the good of their country
of greater moment than their own personal interests.
[cheering, clamouring]
Doesn't he know what dangers await anyone who talks sense in this place?
Oh, I think he's equal to the dangers.
My honourable friend suggests we surrender to the revolutionaries.
Revolution is like a pox. It spreads from person to person.
I bow to my honourable friend's superior knowledge and experience
- in all matters regarding the pox. - [laughter]
Why would we withdraw from America
when half of the Americans are loyal to the Crown?
Less than one in four Americans are loyal.
If he calls that half, I'd hate to be his wife and share half his bed.
[laughter]
[man] Mr Foreign Secretary.
My honourable and young friend should explain to the House
the difference between appeasement and surrender.
- [man] Hear, hear! - [muttering]
The difference between appeasement and surrender is merely a matter of time
and perhaps 10,000 more young lives
- wasted for no reason. - [clamouring]
[man] Go on.
Two guineas.
Sweet Prospero, why hast thou forsaken me?
Brave in the House, but at the table a mouse.
Your Grace, you know these merchant boys are richer than we are.
[man] Aye. I have ten guineas left.
So ten it is.
In or out, Wilberforce?
- A pencil and paper. - No, no, no.
Brooks's Club house rules. No IOUs.
Amongst gentlemen, perhaps, but Wilberforce is a tradesman.
You gamble with what you have with you.
Wilberforce, will you take my IOU?
- We split the pot and call it evens. - To hell with that. Payment in kind.
There's nothing you have I'd want, Your Grace.
Tarleton, fetch my nigger.
My coach driver. Go and wake him up and bring him in now.
I bought a nigger in Port of Spain.
He eats better than I do, so he's strong as an ox.
He'd fetch at least 25 guineas at the West India Dock.
The game is over.
What's wrong, Wilberforce?
If I hadn't brought the boy to London,
he'd have been worked to death in a sugar cane field.
I saved his miserable life. There.
I raise the stakes.
Wilberforce? In the game or out?
[man] Evening.
You act as if you'd never seen slavery before.
For me it's like arsenic. Each new tiny dose doubles the effect.
- You're not afraid of Clarence. - Because he's the son of the king?
So, you want "bloody noses and cracked crowns"?
- Shakespeare, Henry IV. - A play about England changing.
- As it will soon change. - Only if we change it.
You don't believe you and I could change things?
I would change myself first.
[men singing]
Do you remember, Billy, at Cambridge
I had a reputation as something of a singer?
I do remember.
So I think I'm going to go and sing them a song.
[men continue singing]
- Silence! - [singing continues]
Silence!
[singing stops]
You sound like a chorus of bloody tomcats.
Now, let me introduce you to somebody who does it properly.
[scattered applause]
I dedicate this song to my honourable friend,
- His Grace, the Duke of Clarence. - [laughter]
It was written by my old preacher.
He was captain of a slave ship for 20 years.
He repented his sins and then he wrote this song.
# Amazing Grace
- # How sweet the sound - Times are hard for the militant boys!
- # That saved a wretch - [man shouting]
# Like me
# I once was lost
# But now am found
# Was blind
# But now
# I see #
Dear God, I know this is utterly absurd,
but I feel I have to meet you in secret.
[man coughing]
Sorry to interrupt, sir. There is a beggar at the kitchen door.
I would turn him away, sir, but you insisted I always check.
Just give him breakfast.
Very good, sir.
- Richard? - Sir?
I know that lying down on the wet grass is not a normal thing to do.
None of my business, sir.
Truth is, uh...
...I've been even more strange than usual lately, haven't I?
It's God.
I have 10,000 engagements of state today,
but I would prefer to spend the day getting a wet arse,
studying dandelions and marvelling at bloody spiders' webs.
You've found God, sir?
I think he found me.
Do you have any idea how inconvenient that is,
how idiotic it will sound?
I've a political career glittering ahead of me
and in my heart I want spiders' webs.
"It is a sad fate for a man to die too well-known to everybody else
and still unknown to himself."
Francis Bacon.
I don'tjust dust your books, sir.
When I was 15, I almost ran away with the circus.
They said I could have been an acrobat.
- Good morning, Mr Pitt. - Morning.
[man] Excuse me, sir.
You read my letter.
The man who wrote that letter was not you.
It was written by some wild preacher man that has gotten into your head.
No.
- So did he reply? - Who
God. You were going to ask God whether you should take up politics or religion.
You're always too direct, Billy.
I urgently need to know where your heart lies, Wilber.
- What's urgent? - I...
I'm planning to become prime minister.
- [laughs] Some day. - No, I mean soon. Very soon.
Thanks to your performances in the House, Fox and North will resign.
Lord Rockingham will become prime minister.
Lord Rockingham's health is not good. When he dies, I will make my move.
- You've worked it all out. - I want you beside me, Wilber.
All the way.
You've read my letter but not taken in a word.
I would have you in my government in whichever capacity you choose.
[sighs] Billy, no one of our age has ever taken power.
Which is why we're too young to realise that certain things are impossible.
So we will do them anyway.
I need an answer, Wilber.
Do you intend to use your beautiful voice to praise the Lord
or change the world?
[woman] Here. Cut this, will you?
- [woman 2] I've got too much to do. - [woman 3] You take care of them.
Any more flour?
- [girl] I can't! - [woman 1] Put your elbow into it.
Marjorie, Mr Wilberforce is on his way down.
[clucking]
Marjorie, I'm expecting some people for dinner.
[whimpers]
Marjorie? Marjorie?
- She's been run off her feet, sir. - How so?
Well, take today, for example. You have 25 guests for lunch.
Do I?
[indistinct chatter]
If you remember, you decided to reward various volunteers
who worked for some quite precariously financed charities.
Some brought deserving children. Others brought less deserving relatives.
- I really should get some sort of... - Diary, sir. Yes. Or more cooks.
[man] Go on! Go on!
Is that the appetiser?
No, that's His Grace, the Duke of Clarence.
Wilberforce, the Reverend John Ramsay.
Reverend.
Edward Hope.
And Michael Shaw. Both friends.
- This is Olaudah Equiano. - Mr Equiano. Please.
- You've travelled far to be here? - No distance would be too great.
- And this is Hannah Moore. - Mr Wilberforce.
Who has travelled all the way from Clapham.
Finally, let me introduce Mr Thomas Clarkson.
Beautiful house. Sweet little rabbit.
It's a hare, actually.
Please.
So come on. Who are they?
Why don't you ask them?
Well, I hope the goose is tender. She was rather old.
I find the older I get, the more tender I become.
- [chuckling] - [bird squawks]
So, Miss Moore, you live in Clapham.
I hear it's very tranquil there.
When certain issues are raised amongst my friends and I,
it is anything but tranquil.
Ah. And, uh, which issues are those?
Issues regarding the making of a better world.
Better in which way?
If you make the world better in one way, it becomes better in every way.
Don't you think?
Mr Equiano, what business brings you to London?
My business in London is you, Mr Wilberforce.
What? You wish to discuss something with me?
No. We do not want to talk
because we hear that you are a man who doesn't believe what he hears
until he sees it with his own eyes.
These are for the legs.
These for the arms.
This is for the neck.
Works like so.
When the slaves leave port in Africa,
they're locked into a space four foot by 18 inches.
They have no sanitation, very little food, stagnant water.
Their waste and blood fills the holes within three days and is never emptied.
These irons and chains are to keep them from throwing themselves overboard.
The chains are not unlocked until you reach the plantation in Jamaica.
Around half of the slaves are dead already.
In the markets, they stuff knotted rope
into the anuses of those who are sick
to disguise the dysentery.
When you reach the plantation, they put irons to the fire...
...and do this.
To let you know that you no longer belong to God, but to a man.
Mr Wilberforce, we understand you're having problems
choosing whether to do the work of God
or the work of a political activist.
We humbly suggest that you can do both.
You planned this.
I've seen the literature you've been reading.
You've stooped to searching through my desk?
Sir William Dolben told me you'd asked to be shown round the East India Docks.
So, you would use my private concerns for your own political ends.
Yes, exactly that.
The principles of Christianity lead to action as well as meditation.
Allow me to meditate on it before I decide on any action.
Just think about this, Wilber.
The slave trade has 300 MPs in its pocket.
It would be just you against them.
But you could do it.
You would do it.
[indistinct chatter]
Oh, stop moaning.
[man] Excuse me, sir.
Do you have a penny for a boy that went to fight the Yanks
and came back half a man?
Hello, Mr Newton. It's me, William.
Hello, John. How are you?
Hello, John. It's me, Wilber.
I'm here to seek your...
[Wilberforce] The beggar at the door assures me that I'm now old enough
to call you John.
[laughs]
You're dressing very simply these days.
I'm a simple man. I try to pretend I am a monk, but I don't have the willpower.
I'm a monk Mondays, Wednesdays...
When I read your name in the papers, doing these great things,
I still see a tiny boy with his hair a mess
and ink on his fingers.
So, what do you want with an old creature?
I'm here to seek your advice.
When you were a child, you used to ask God for advice.
Then I grew up. And grew foolish.
And now?
Now... slowly, my faith is returning.
How slowly?
- No bolts of lightning. - [chuckles]
God sometimes does his work with gentle drizzle, not storms.
Drip... drip... drip.
My friend William Pitt has declared an interest in me.
William who?
He's offering me a place in the world.
Just make sure you're in the world, not of the world.
There'd be no escape from power once I have it.
- I would have to see things through. - Why wouldn't you?
Are you contemplating a life of solitude?
Wilber, you have work to do.
Besides, people like you too much
to let you live a life of solitude.
Haven't you chosen solitude?
You, of all people, should know I can never be alone.
There now.
- There now what? - You're the reason I came.
You told me that you live in the company of 20,000 ghosts.
The ghosts of slaves.
I was explaining to a child
why a grown man cowers in a dark corner.
I need you to tell me about them.
I'm not strong enough to hear my own confession.
- I thought time might have changed you. - It has. I'm older.
Pitt has asked me to take them on, the slavers.
I'm the last person you should come to for advice.
I can't even say the name of any of my ships
without being back onboard them in my head.
All I know is 20,000 slaves live with me in this little church.
- There's still blood on my hands. - Will you help me, John?
I can't help you.
But do it, Wilber. Do it.
Take them on. Blow their dirty, filthy ships out of the water.
The planters, sugar barons,
Alderman "Sugar Cane", the Lord Mayor of London.
Liverpool, Boston, Bristol, New York.
All their streets running with blood, dysentery, puke!
You won't come away from those streets clean, Wilber.
You'll get filthy with it, you'll dream it,
see it in broad daylight.
But do it. For God's sake.
Sir, I have Mr Thomas Clarkson.
Forgive me. Mr Wilberforce was here a moment ago.
I'd better go and find him.
[whining]
- [crashing] - [barking]
- Good afternoon. - Sorry if I alarmed you.
I had this box made up in the exact dimensions of a slave berth.
I thought you could use it in your practical demonstrations.
Why did you wait until your butler had left before you got out of the box?
They all think I'm mad already.
As will most people in the House of Commons
when I present my bill.
[man] Wilberforce, conditions in Jamaica
are far more brutal than I could have imagined.
Many children are scalded to death by the molten lava.
Others die of exhaustion or roll into the fires in their sleep.
The result in the morning is a few pounds of pure, refined sugar.
[knocking]
- [groaning] - Wilberforce, are you all right?
Sit up for me.
Here, drink this.
- What happened? - I read James's letter from Jamaica.
When I fell asleep, it was as if I were living inside it.
Perhaps the laudanum the doctor gave you is badly mixed.
I know the effects of opium, Henry.
- This isn't the medication. - What, then?
I was chosen for this task and I failed.
Some part of me does not accept the idea that I've given up.
- I'll dilute this. - Can you dilute what I feel?
You've given your youth and your health for this cause.
It's time to let someone else try.
So, Mr Wilberforce...
...I understand you have an interest in botany.
Botany, Miss Spooner? Whatever gives you the idea that I might be interested
in something as tedious as botany?
[snorts and coughs]
Sorry. It's a private joke.
Now, Wilber, I know you're not interested in botany,
but there's a fascinating creeping ivy up the far end of the garden.
Barbara, you really must go and see it too.
Go on.
To irritate them, let's pretend to argue.
- What about? - Something we disagree on.
Think of something.
The war in France.
I think we should settle with Napoleon right now.
So do I. Schools.
I'm a member of your movement for free education.
I agreed with every word you said on the Dales factory debate.
You read every word?
- No. - Neither did I.
[Barbara giggles]
- Gin. - Replace it in the cities with beer.
Absolutely.
I'm definitely alone in my opinions about animals.
No. I joined your society for the prevention of cruelty.
Well, I'm extreme. I have a pet fox, a pet rat and a crow that can't fly.
I used to have a pet hare, but it died of kindness.
- [Barbara laughs] - America.
We must reassess the power of the collective political process.
Agreed.
Oh, and, of course, we are agreed on slavery.
I'm against flowers in church. What do you say to that?
I am for them.
As am I.
I shouldn't talk about the slave trade?
I've spent so many years talking about it.
So, what are a few more minutes?
When Mr Pitt first became prime minister,
the two of you were like meteorites shooting through our imagination.
- Whose imaginations? - Girls my age.
You stopped taking sugar in your tea?
I wore an abolition badge made by Josiah Wedgwood.
He was a good friend to us.
And I travelled 30 miles in the rain to hear Thomas Clarkson speak.
- Did he deafen you? - He opened my eyes.
- I met the African. - Equiano.
He came to town with a hundred copies of his book. They sold in an hour.
- You signed our petitions. - A hundred times.
A hundred times. Three million names, a million candles to read them by.
- Must have been so exciting. - Exciting?
It seemed that every spring the daffodils came out,
every summer the cherries ripened
and every autumn William Wilberforce would present his bill to the House.
- And still... - And still...?
And still, after all the badges, the petitions,
all the speeches and the bills,
ships full of human souls in chains sail around the world as cargo!
I'm sorry.
- This is why I shouldn't talk about it. - I think you should.
There. We've found something we disagree on.
"Am I not a man whose soul is drawn to heaven
like water from the dark well of Africa?"
From Equiano's book.
[sighs] He was a man like no other.
Please, tell me about him.
It seems to me
that if there is a bad taste in your mouth, you spit it out.
You don't constantly swallow it back.
[Wilberforce] Not long after I first met him,
he asked me to come to the East India Dock.
He said there was a ship I should see.
A ship he knew well.
Mr Equiano.
This way.
Thank you, sir.
- [woman] Hello. - [man] Sweetheart.
They make you lie in this space.
The shackles dislocate your hip or your shoulder.
You are in pain all the way around the world.
How long is the journey?
Three weeks, if the weather is good.
For amusement, they sometimes hang the women from these,
by the ankles, to rape them.
In stormy weather, they take the very sickest
and throw them into the sea to lighten the ship's load.
How did you survive?
Your life is a thread. It breaks or it doesn't break.
Before I travelled in a ship like this,
I was a prince, in many ways not unlike you.
It was a beautiful day like no other,
the last day I saw my home in Africa.
[Wilberforce] It is with a heavy heart
that I bring to the attention of this House
a trade which degrades men to the level of brutes
and insults the highest qualities of our common nature.
I am speaking of... the slave trade.
[protesting]
I know that many of my honourable friends in this House
have interests in the Indies.
Others have investments in plantations. Others are ship owners.
And I believe them to be men of humanity.
I believe you all to be men of humanity.
- If the wretchedness of any one - [clamouring]
of the many hundreds of slaves stowed in their ships
- could be brought to view... - [protests drown out Wilberforce]
Order! Order!
I can hardly believe my ears.
- We can hardly believe your mouth. - [laughter]
It seems my young friend opposite has a long-term strategy
to destroy the very nation that spawned him.
[shouting]
While I was in Virginia losing my fingers in battle with the Americans,
- he was busy appeasing them. - [clamouring]
Now he would hand over the riches of the Indies to the bloody French!
lf... If we didn't have slaves, there would be no plantations.
And with no plantations, how would we fill the coffers of the king?
Does my honourable friend
really believe that if we left off the trade,
the French wouldn't immediately step into our place and reap the rewards?
[clamouring]
All this food. There's only a handful of people in there.
He's an optimist. Completely incurable.
Our defeat in the House today was not unexpected.
But our intention was to flush out the opposition
and discover how many people would support us.
Yes, well, we certainly found out who our friends are.
All 16 of them.
I... I sent a note of thanks to everyone who voted for us.
How sweet of you.
Some of us know how to take defeat graciously.
- Something to with with breeding? - On this occasion, it probably is.
Everything that is said at this meeting is being taken down for our records.
My friend James Stephen has agreed to be our secretary.
You were saying?
As you can see, not many MPs have responded to our invitation.
Indeed, outside my own family, there is only one: Sir William Dolben.
Sir William, what brings you to this gathering?
I recently took passage from Sierra Leone aboard a slave ship.
What I saw during those 15 days...
But I believe there are plenty of others in the House who share your feelings.
- They're just afraid to show it. - Shame on them!
No shame. No shame. Were I the representative of a port city,
how could I tell those whom I represent that I'm voting to end their livelihood?
- Exactly so. - [all talk at once]
How can human beings be commerce?
- It's exactly this pursuit of lofty... - Nothing lofty about simple humanity.
Please!
Perhaps we should begin this journey with the first step.
We are talking about the truth.
So we should hand it out to people. Drop it from church roofs.
Paint pictures of it. Write songs about it. Make bloody pies out of it.
[Clarkson] Go on.
There is a slave ship at dock in Tilbury
with twice the slave berths it is insured for.
I know that for a fact. But how do we prove it?
Wilber.
- Dear God. - Well, almost.
I've spent 18 months being torn apart by you in the House, Mr Wilberforce.
I thought I'd find out what it feels like to be on your side.
I see you've got plenty of food. Any of you saints drink?
Well, this one bloody does.
Thank you very much.
Agh!
Not fair! Not fair.
I'm not well. My belly.
What's wrong with your belly?
[Wilberforce] Oh!
Besides, you're prime minister.
It is my ministerial duty to let you win.
[laughs] So, what will we do with Fox?
- Put him in a box? - Let him throw the heavy rocks.
- Provide the shocks. - Put Lord Tarleton in the stocks.
Oh!
Oh, if the House of Lords could hear the idiotic way we carry on,
they'd ban anyone under the age of 30 from holding high office ever again.
Well, at least with Fox on board, the world will know we mean business.
The world doesn't know yet.
Nor will it, not until we're ready.
You were born for this, Wilber.
Sometimes I get giddy.
Why is it you only feel the thorns in your feet when you stop running?
Is that some sort of heavy-handed metaphorical advice for me, Mr Pitt?
Yes, I suppose it is.
We must keep going, keep going fast.
[bell rings]
[indistinct shouting]
[sheep bleating]
[playing classical music]
[indistinct chatter]
Thank you very much.
Gentlemen, would you stop the music, please? Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have enjoyed our little tour of the estuary.
But now our sojourn is almost over, I have a confession to make.
This trip wasn't purely arranged to reward those MPs
who have supported me in the past year, nor am I the only sponsor.
- What's he doing? - Ladies and gentleman,
this is a slave ship. The Madagascar.
It has just returned from the Indies
where it delivered 200 men, women and children to Jamaica.
When it left Africa, there were 600 on board.
The rest died of disease or despair.
[sniffing, moaning]
That smell is the smell of death.
Slow, painful death.
Breathe it in. Breathe it deeply.
Take those handkerchiefs away from your noses.
There, now.
Remember that smell.
Remember the Madagascar.
Remember that God made men equal.
[Wilberforce] All that winter, we spread out across the country
gathering evidence for Parliament.
Thomas rode to Bristol, Liverpool, Plymouth,
talking to men who'd worked the slave ships,
ships' doctors who'd treated them,
slaves themselves who'd been whipped and branded.
Equiano published his account of his years as a slave.
He sold 50,000 copies in two months.
Spare a coin, sir?
Our supporters began to only buy sugar produced without slaves in India.
Or they stopped using sugar altogether.
It seemed our message was everywhere.
At least now there was hope. Real hope.
We had a year to collect enough evidence
to convince Parliament of our case.
The planters and the ship owners began to spread rumours about us.
They called us seditious, secretly working to bring down the government.
Clarkson sat in a coach to Birmingham
and overheard someone claim that I'd secretly married a slave woman.
But the weight of our hope made it all seem like glorious infamy.
How long have you been taking laudanum?
I recognise its presence.
My illness and my crusade were born around the same time.
What is your illness?
The doctors tell me it's called colitis.
They don't really understand it, but I do.
You see, sometimes my stomach
gets bored of being a stomach and decides it's a sailing ship.
Then my heart gets jealous and decides it wants to be a see-saw.
And before you know it, my lungs are arguing with one another
whether to be lungs or sponges full of seawater.
[chuckling]
Well, at least that's what I tell my nieces and nephews.
Marianne tells me you like children.
My poor father almost went mad
when I told him I'd stopped taking sugar in my tea.
I was 14,
reading your name in the papers, willing you to win.
I told my friends there was actual slave blood in every lump of sugar.
Has this been so painful to talk about?
It's only painful to talk about because we haven't changed anything.
But, unlike the slaves, I have opium for my pain.