'Amazing Grace': Roots of Freedom

By Jonathan J. Bean
February 24, 2007

William Wilberforce is one of the great forgotten men of history. But, all that is about to change as America marks Black History Month with "Amazing Grace," the remarkable new film that opened nationwide on Feb. 23.

"Amazing Grace" commemorates the bicentennial of the British ban on the slave trade (1807), an antislavery movement led by Wilberforce. Without him, there would have been no end to the slave trade, certainly not in his time.

Read on.