The Better Hour: The Legacy of William Wilberforce

Though the dark history of slavery receives a substantial degree of attention in today's classrooms, the life story of William Wilberforce marks a glaring exception. A late 18th and early 19th Century British Parlamentarian who saw the fulfillment of his Christian ideals in the complete abolition of trans-Atlantic human trafficking, Wilberforce fought aggressively and courageously to achieve this goal, and also set up 69 nonprofit organizations designed to improve social conditions in Great Britain. By telling Wilberforce's story, the biographical documentary The Better Hour: The Legacy of William Wilberforce meditates on the ways in which a single human being can permanently alter the tide of history and definitively end a human evil. Avery Brooks narrates.