One Million American Dreams (2018) - full transcript

Bernstein:
I first heard about Hart Island

when I was working on a story
about a formerly homeless man.

He had lived in the tunnels

underneath Penn Station,
I think.

There was a photographer
who photographed his little --

the little house
he had made himself there.

And because of her work,
he had been rescued,

he'd been given a home,

and then he'd been found dead
in that home.

And he was going
to go to Hart Island.

And it was -- there was
such sadness at the idea



that this man who had finally
achieved a home of his own

was going to be dispossessed --

was going to be
one of the multitude

in these anonymous graves.

[Siren wailing in distance]

♪♪

I'm a New Yorker, and I believe

that New York is more than,

you know, the old idea
of the city on the hill.

New York is really
what America is about.

♪♪

And there is a tragedy
inherent in a big metropolis.

There are all these stories
of the chance gone by,

the mistakes, the bad childhood,



bad choices, or just bad luck.

That's something that any
great metropolis contends with.

♪♪

But there's
something more here --

that you could have
a loving family,

a career, money set aside.

♪♪

And you could still end up
in a mass grave

on an island
off-limits to the public

buried by inmates
paid 50 cents an hour.

♪♪

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[Siren wailing]

♪♪

♪♪

Rockwell: "The wind rises in
from the sound

carrying the clang of the bell
buoy from nearby City Island,

tolling its fitful warning."

[Bell clanging]

♪♪

"All around is desolate and sad,

no kind hand
to decorate these graves

with trophies of love
and remembrance."

♪♪

"Not even a headstone
to show where is interred

what was once a human being."

♪♪

♪♪

Lacquer: I think people have
understood since Roman antiquity

that cities eat
many of their inhabitants.

The word "potter's field,"
after all, is biblical,

but it really means a place,

an industrial area
where we used to dig clay,

and that's where you put
the bodies that the city ate up.

Every city has a place
for the burying of the poor.

Hart Island is,
like everything in New York,

sort of bigger and grander

and slightly grungier.
[Chuckles]

So in that sense,
Hart Island represents,

you know, a city
which spat out a million people.

♪♪

Czitrom: We must always value
the individual life,

particularly in a city
like New York,

where too often,
we reduce people

to teeming masses, immigrants,

the refuse of the world.

They make us forget sometimes

that behind every one
of those bodies at Hart Island

was a lived life,
aspirations, loved ones.

It seems to me that that
all those million-plus folks

buried in Hart Island
offer us a kind of record

of lived life in New York City,

in many cases anonymous.

In many cases,
the people are unknown.

In many cases,
we know very little

about the people buried there.

Nonetheless, these lives matter,
and they mattered.

[Bell clanging]

♪♪

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[Ferrer speaking Spanish]

♪♪

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De Jesus: My baby was already
sick, so I already knew

that there was a 50/50 chance
of him living or dying.

[Child speaks indistinctly]

Gave birth to him.

I didn't have the financial

to be able
to bury him and stuff.

So the hospital gave me a week

for me to, you know,
collect the money.

I went to the welfare
day after day, day after day

the entire week
that I was given,

and they said no.

And at that point,
I didn't know my real mother.

I didn't know my real family.

So it was like,
I really didn't have nobody.

I was alone out here
living actually literally alone.

I can't be ungrateful,

because me living under public
assistance, New York City,

has been helping
my children a lot.

But when it comes to my son,
they failed me completely,

because I put
all my trust on them.

I put my child's body
in their hands to bury him.

You know,
it's not the way I wanted.

But I figure at least
he's going to be buried.

He'll be a peace.
But he's -- He wasn't.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Czitrom: Well,
when Hart Island is opened,

New York is on the cusp of yet
another enormous rush of growth.

The city's population basically
doubled every 20 years.

♪♪

New York City is the commercial
capital of America.

It's the center
of its publishing industry.

It's the center of fashion.

And, of course,
next to the glitz,

next to the glamor,
next to the mansions being built

by A.T. Stewart
or the Vanderbilts,

you have the reality
of The Five Points, the slums,

the very, very difficult lives
lived by most New Yorkers --

that is to say
the working class and the poor.

♪♪

New York is forced to create
a whole series of institutions

to deal with the realities of
tens of thousands of immigrants

coming into the city
continually.

There was a sense, I think,

that these people needed
to be separated out,

that people were not comfortable
seeing the insane,

seeing the paupers,
seeing elderly alcoholics

on the streets of New York.

And many of these
institutions --

prisons, lunatic asylums,
hospitals,

all were erected and created
outside Manhattan

on these islands
in the East River.

♪♪

Sante:
There was Welfare Island,

there were
the Quarantine Islands,

and, of course, Ellis Island.

And these were all various
processing stations.

Hart Island was
the terminal island.

So, this archipelago
that New York City is

it is sort of part
of the great digestive system

of the metropolis.

♪♪

There's this perpetually
renewing population

of people who come
for an opportunity

or because
they're fleeing something

or because they want
to reinvent themselves,

who wash up in New York,

and perhaps, they do not
find a way of "making it."

And so they exist
on the fringes.

♪♪

New York has had to, you know,
just out of necessity,

cultivate this kind of
indifference.

This is something
that all great cities

have in common
to one degree or another,

but New York City is
an exaggeration of this process.

♪♪

Czitrom:
In the 1890s, early 1900s,

every spring,
the police department

would have to fish out
scores and scores of bodies

that floated to the surface
on the harbor or in the rivers.

What do you do
with these bodies?

Most of them, totally anonymous.

These folks went to Hart Island.

This is a place
that New York has to have

to service the reality of death.

♪♪

Bernstein:
I think New Yorkers understand

that there are always going
to be inequalities in the city,

huge inequalities, and they're
in very sharp focus.

But in death, we're equal.

We all die alone.

[Sirens wailing in distance]

♪♪

In today's world, you have so
many families who are estranged

or just lost to each other
by distance, by misfortune.

♪♪

And yet to know
that someone you once loved

or that you hoped loved you

is buried in a mass grave
on Hart Island,

that resonates forever.

♪♪

♪♪

[Ferrer speaking Spanish]

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Hanson:
We got married in 1982

and got married
at my sister's house

'cause I never wanted
a big wedding.

I was never the one
to be in front of --

you know, wear a dress
and have all these people

that, you know, sometimes you
don't even know half of them.

Why would you want them there
at your wedding?

But there were a lot of great
times with with Bruce, a lot.

♪♪

And when he started
spiraling down,

that was in 84,

we moved right next to a bar
called Lady L's.

We used to go to
Lady L's on on Friday nights,

got a babysitter for Kimberly.

And he started hanging out
with a lot of different people

and started drinking heavily.

And the bar was right next door,

which was not
the greatest thing,

Didn't think anything of it
when we moved to the house.

But it happened, and...

♪♪

I remember vodka bottles
being under the bed hidden,

you know, so --
And they would argue constantly,

so I just remember my childhood
not wonderful.

♪♪

You know, I think
that he hurt his back at work,

and he got addicted
to pain medication

and then cocaine, then alcohol,
and he just spiraled downhill.

♪♪

Hanson: A lot of times at night,
I wouldn't stay home.

I would sleep over
my girlfriend's house

with the dog
and, of course, my daughter.

And my mother
called up one night,

and I wasn't there yet 'cause
I stayed at Eileen's house.

And my mom said,
"What kind of a --

What kind of a daughter are you?

You don't come home at night?
What is wrong with you?"

And I broke -- I broke down
in tears, because now they knew.

Now my secret is coming out.

[Siren wailing]

♪♪

He was better off
out of the picture

if he couldn't be straight,

because it would just hurt her,
would hurt her too much.

If you're in a relationship,
you have to be "us,"

has to be family.
If it's not family,

it's not a relationship.
It's not love. It's not there.

[Car horn blares]

[Whistle blows]

Bradshaw: He would always
enter my conscience.

I would always wonder,
is he okay?

What is he doing?
Is he living on the streets?

Even when I would go to
Manhattan when I was younger,

I would always wonder
if that was him.

You know, I'd always want
to give money to those people

'cause I felt like
that was my dad.

Like, I hoped, which people
don't hope,

that he was either
in the hospital or in jail,

where I would get that one
moment that he was sober.

And I never got it.

And the fact
that he was in a hospital

and nobody contacted
any family members

and then hid his body
for three years is crazy.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Sweat: So, in the world today,
everyone knows America

as the land of freedom
and opportunity,

because you see me
in front of you now.

But prior to seeing me here,

you didn't know of me,
except for one thing.

"He is less than a man.

He is not America.

He is the slave
that built America."

♪♪

This is the twosome
of every man and woman of color.

Now, we at the point

when we stumble upon
a part of history

that doencounter us
as a people of color,

of honor, of respect.

♪♪

[Man shouting indistinctly
in distance]

♪♪

Hart and Rikers Island
at the time of 1860

was being converted
into Camp Astor.

♪♪

There was mustered in

over 200,000 soldiers of color.

♪♪

America was not America
at that time.

It was Confederacy in the South
and the Union up in the North,

and what brought us together
was the Civil War.

♪♪

If it wasn't for these men,
we would not be free today.

If it wasn't for those
United States colored troops,

we would not be as proud
as we are today.

[Cheers and applause
in distance]

♪♪

United States colored troops
were definitely on that island.

And there still are certain
little indications

that there are so
few bodies that still remain.

♪♪

And in us knocking at the door,
who is there to open it?

A correctional department.

I've never so been humiliated

that to have a correction
officer direct me in prayer.

♪♪

Hunt:
When the burials began in 1869,

the Department of Charities and
Correction was one city agency.

And what happened more recently

was the Department of Welfare
pulled out of Hart Island

and left
the Department of Correction

in charge of these burials.

♪♪

So, it used to be
that there was a dead house

at the end of 26th Street
and a dock,

and in the dead house,
the bodies which were unclaimed

were put in these boxes
and then put onto a boat.

There were two steamships.
One was called Hope[Chuckles]

and the other
was called Fidelity.

♪♪

Rockwell: "The boat backs up
to the dead house

and takes the coffins
with their ghastly freight.

They're shoved
rudely down a slide

like the various merchandise.

And as they strike the deck,

we hear the thud of the body
and its rude receptacle."

♪♪

"'Business is good today,'
the Charon of the Styx says.

As we count the coffins
heaped up promiscuously,

we think so, too."

♪♪

"We steam away and soon touch
at Blackwell's Island.

Here, the bodies of those
who died of smallpox

and other contagious diseases
are taken on-board.

Charity Hospital is also visited
and contributes its quota."

♪♪

"The coffins are bundled out

to men who cart them away
into a field,

handling them as rudely
as baggage masters

to trucks at a depot.

Trenches are about 15 feet deep
and 6 feet wide.

The coffins are piled up
like wood and cords

or fuel in a coal pit, 13 deep.

As soon as the coffin is placed
at the bottom of the trench,

a barrow of dirt
is thrown over it

and another coffin placed above.

Children's coffins are chucked
in at the feet of the others

and help to form a solid mass.

A foot of earth is then
thrown upon the upper one

until the work is completed."

♪♪

"Thus all nationalities
rest close together.

The murderer is a close
companion of the thief

and the suicide
is just beneath the pauper.

There is no aristocracy."

♪♪

Hunt:
I first heard of Hart Island

from a physician

who was at Harlem Hospital.

And she was talking about

infants that were born
addicted to crack

and that they were buried
in shoeboxes

1,000 at a time on Hart Island.

And at that time, Hart Island
was open to journalists

and to academics,

and so I decided that
I was just going to get there.

And it just so happened that
that day was the very first day

that these inmates
had ever been on Hart Island.

And these were young men
convicted of misdemeanors

like turnstile jumping,
graffiti.

So, you know, they're not felons
or anything like that.

They're young men that
couldn't afford a good lawyer.

Rodriguez:
Oh, I used to live in Red Hook.

That was one of
the bad neighborhoods

by the Battery Tunnel
in Brooklyn.

And New York City,
and it was crazy in '89.

It was crack
and stuff like that.

And we used to sell weed
and drugs and stuff like that.

And I wind up getting caught
with possession,

and I win up going
to Rikers Island

for a little bit of time.

♪♪

In those days,
it was it was a zoo.

You could get anything. You
could get a knife or anything.

One guy -- One time,
the guy had a gun in there.

It was like -- like
gladiator school every day.

And so when I got short --

Short means that
you're going home.

You don't have a lot of time
left in your sentence --

They gave me a job
in Hart Island.

♪♪

Next thing you know,
they put some shackles on you,

and they take you
on a little bus,

and then they take you
on a boat.

I'm a little scared
'cause I'm in handcuffs.

I'm on the boat thinking
the boat's going to go down.

I think the worst or whatever.

And they take you
to Hart Island.

And I still didn't know that
Hart Island was potter's field.

I heard of potter's field
in movies and stuff like that,

but I didn't -- I didn't even
know what -- what it meant.

And there's only two officers.
No fence, no nothing.

And there was this smell.
I don't know what the smell was.

So, the next morning,
it's raining, and they tell you,

"We're going to go --
We're going to go to work."

♪♪

We walk to this big hallway,
but it was graves,

and there were mass graves
with wooden boxes,

and we're going to move them
to put more boxes in there.

And the people that were there
are John Does

or people that nobody
wants to pay for

or people that get lost
in the system.

They were like five deep.
It was a big hole.

There were little coffins
in the grave,

and the guys would all
talk about them,

and they would just say
crack babies,

even though who knows
what they were there for.

But that's the mentality
they had.

that those were, like,
undesirables or whatever,

that they didn't count
or whatever.

♪♪

♪♪

Crowley: When our mayor
took office, he was elected

because of his campaign

on our city
being a tale of two cities,

the haves and the have-nots.

And those who have not

are usually the ones who wind up
being buried on Hart Island.

♪♪

The difficulty in government,
especially when you're the mayor

and you're managing
a very large city,

the priorities of the public
take shape

and become the most
important issues you address.

And not many people
bring Hart Island

to elected officials'
attentions.

♪♪

It is out of sight and out
of mind to so many New Yorkers.

People just don't care that much

unless they have
a personal connection.

It shouldn't be so removed
from the rest of the city.

We should know what happens
after people die.

We should be able
to see that space.

♪♪

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Levine: The fact
that we're using inmates

to maintain
this active burial site

where one million souls
are buried,

where so much of New York City
history is buried,

is -- is Dickensian.

And it is a document
of the inequality

that has existed in this city
for centuries.

Dunn: I don't think the state
is unique in this respect.

If you're poor in this world
or you're not powerful,

you get forgotten
pretty quickly.

And Hart Island is exactly where
our society and our country

puts the people
who are poor and forgotten.

♪♪

And you have, you know,
a situation you couldn't make up

in which you have the poor
and forgotten people

who are alive and are in jail

who are bearing the poor and
forgotten people who are dead.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Ferrer speaking Spanish]

Bernstein:
The case of Ciro Ferrer,

this man who came here
from Havana,

when I talked to his daughter,

she said he was a --
he was a good father.

He -- He really went
to support them.

They spoke. There were
photographs sent back

and then suddenly silence.

He had been found
wandering in the street

near the apartment
where he lived alone.

He had dementia.
He was placed in a nursing home.

He told a court evaluator

that he had a wife
and children in Cuba.

And yet
the court-appointed guardian,

who was collecting $400 a month
from his Social Security

and giving the rest
to the nursing home,

never contacted them.

Man: [Through intercom]
Hello?

Hola. Español?

Yes.

Uh...
[Speaking Spanish]

Okay, no problem.

[Women conversing in Spanish]

Sí.

[Both laugh]

♪♪

[Laughs]

♪♪

♪♪

De Jesus: I was sitting one day

with my friend
in her living room,

and we had started speaking
about him again.

And I was like, "Wow, my baby --

It's going to be 12 years."

And she was like,

"Where was it that -- that
the city buried him again?"

I'm like, "Honestly,
I really don't know.

The only thing that I know
is Hart Island."

I went back to the hospital
where I gave birth,

and they were like, "Yeah,

but you have to communicate
with the correctional facility."

I called, and the lady
that I spoke to,

she was like, "Yes,"
that the baby was there.

[Sniffing sharply]

You have to sit there
and wait for police officers

to actually open the gate
and let you in.

They actually
make you sign papers

before you even
get on the ferry.

I'm like, okay.

What can I do if
the Department of Corrections,

they gonna treat us
like if we visiting a jail?

♪♪

But once the captain
got close to us

and asked me,
"Did anybody notify you?"

I'm like,
"Notify me about what?"

And that's when
he gave me the news,

"We can't find your child here."

I'm like -- I...
just broke down right there.

My daughter -- My oldest
daughter, she broke down crying.

♪♪

♪♪

[Children chattering
in distance]

♪♪

"If he's not there,
where he at, Mommy?"

♪♪

Every day, they ask.

"Did you speak to the lawyer?

Did -- Did they found Anthony?"

♪♪

"Are we gonna finally
go visit Anthony?"

I'm like, "No, we --
we have to sit down and wait.

It's out of my hands now.

Now we just have to wait and see
where is Anthony at."

♪♪

Every time I call,
there's different people

that answer the phone.

All they keep telling me
is that there's a check-in

when they brought my baby in,
but there's no check-out.

♪♪

♪♪

Where he at?
What they did to his body?

♪♪

You know, how can the city
just lose a tiny body?

♪♪

How is that it's not possible?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Rockwell: "Long ago, it was said
that one half of the world

does not know
how the other half lives.

That was true then.

It did not know
because it did not care."

♪♪

"The half that was on top
cared little for the struggles

and less for the fate
of those who were underneath,

so long as it was able
to hold them there

and keep its own seat."

♪♪

"In New York, the youngest
of the world's great cities,

that time came later
than elsewhere."

♪♪

Yochelson: Riis was a Danish
immigrant who came to America

at the age of 20 in 1870,

spent 5 years
as a homeless person,

and then worked as a
newspaper reporter for 23 years

covering the slums.

♪♪

He was immersing himself
in the worst,

most frightening,
demoralizing part

of New York City's life.

And he had the brilliant idea
of using photographs

to give people an image
that went with his words.

So this is really the beginning

of what we would understand
as photojournalism.

♪♪

Czitrom: Riis had been
a police reporter for many years

before he took photographs.

And as a police reporter,

he was assigned
to go with the NYPD

to do all these things that cops
had to do in those days.

It was not so much
about fighting crime

as it was being a kind of social
service agency for the city.

♪♪

Cops had to fish out dead bodies
from the rivers and the harbors.

Cops had to help wash children.

Cops were helping to give
vaccinations in the tenements.

So Riis,
by reporting on the police,

got a tremendous education in
the underside of New York life.

Now, the title
of his most famous book,

"How the Other Half Lives," is
actually a kind of ironic joke.

A more accurate title
would have been

"How the Other 3/4 Lives."

Yochelson: "How the Other Half
Lives" was a tour of the slums

in which he used everything
he knew about this neighborhood

that he'd spent
over 10 years reporting on

and describing
in very colorful language

this way of life
unknown to his audience,

which was essentially
a middle-class audience.

♪♪

This was not really someone very
concerned with composing images,

in large part because of
the very primitive camera

that he was using,

where he would come into
a crowded lodging house

when people were sleeping
and set off a gun, actually,

literally a gun
with the flash powder

and create a big boom and wake
people up and capture them.

♪♪

I mean, it's not at all
respectful of his subjects

in the pictures,

and that's exactly
what they convey,

which is the indignity
of their lives.

♪♪

This tour really ends
at Hart Island

because it's a really
critical subject for his story.

It's the climax of his story.

In a chapter called
"The Common Herd,"

he describes the end
of their lives in this way.

♪♪

"One free excursion
awaits young and old,

whom bitter poverty has denied
the poor privilege

of the choice of the home
in death

they were denied in life.

The ride up the sound
to the potter's field,

charitably styled
the city cemetery.

But even there,
they do not escape their fate.

In the common trench
of the poor burying ground,

they lay packed three stories
deep shoulder to shoulder,

crowded in death
as they were in life."

♪♪

♪♪

Woman: [In distance]
To the Creator, to the
initiator of life,

Father, we first
reverence and hallow Your name.

♪♪

Lord, we're here this day
to give honor

and to commemorate all of those
women and men

who sacrificed their lives
so that we can have life,

so that we can walk around
this nation, this planet,

in hope,
so that we could have freedom.

We honor them this day. Amen.

-Amen.
-Amen.

[Applause]

♪♪

Sweat: There's a legend about
people that grow up in Brooklyn,

that we're very strong stock.

We're very straightforward,

and we're people
that have resources.

My resource has always
been my family.

As I grew up, I went through

all of the racial
discriminatory situations

that the world knows of today
that happened in America.

I have learned the humiliation
of being that man.

♪♪

The Civil War freed the slaves.

Vietnam was my civil war.

♪♪

It's the first place
I ever felt whole as a man.

It's the first place in my life

that I ever met a man
of my opposite color

that was true to heart and soul
about life and death with me.

♪♪

His name was Richard.

He's gone and been gone
since he was 19 years old.

Was our machine gunner.

He is that boy from Arkansas

who taught me
of white and black love.

Man becomes family with man
with war.

Comradeship, we call it.

♪♪

During my trial of warriorship,

my wife was 17 years old

and pregnant
with my second pregnancy.

♪♪

She gave birth
in St. Albans Naval Hospital.

And when I got back
to the United States of America,

I had no knowledge how to handle
any of this type of a business.

♪♪

So when it was exposed to me
that it was twins,

I didn't even question
where the other one was

when they only showed me one.

♪♪

Now, that's a pivotal point

because she's never
spoken to me about it.

That's because
of our immaturity,

our guilt with the situation.

Everyone in the world knows

no one wants to bury their
family on a potter's field.

Who should have to go there?

♪♪

♪♪

[Children chattering
in distance]

♪♪

Bradshaw: I have a family video,

an old one, and he's in it.

♪♪

And sometimes
I'll just replay that,

just to know that he did care
at any time.

♪♪

You know, the things
that I remember about him,

the majority was good things.

♪♪

The majority
that I remember from him

was that he tried to be...
around and there and...

you know, a good of a person
as he could.

But drugs and alcohol
just took over.

She said, "Do you think
he'd ever come around?"

I said, "I don't know, Kim.
I don't know."

I said, "He's always welcome
as long as he's straight.

If he's straight,
he's more than welcome."

[Indistinct conversations
in distance]

Then she got to the point
where she's 16.

"I want to see my daddy.
I really want to see him.

Don't you think
you can find him?"

I said, "You know what, Kim?
I'll do my best.

I'll try to find him."

So I called the bars
where he hung out

and his friends hung out.

He had one friend.
His name was Pete Torres.

I left my phone number
with the bartender,

and I said, "Listen, if Pete
comes in or Bruce comes in

or any one of his friends
come in, have him call me,

'cause Kim really,
really wants to see him.

She wants to see her daddy."

♪♪

We're on Seaside Heights
when we met Bruce.

He was happy
to see -- see Kimberly.

He's happy to see -- see me.

He wore long sleeves,

and she knew he was doing drugs.

She could tell that.

But they had -- they had
a really good time.

He won a TV set for her.

And she was, like, ecstatic
and said, "Oh, Daddy,

make sure you call me again.
I want to see you again.

This is --
You know, this is good

that we could get together."

"I will always have him
in my life now.

I have a connection to him.
I can call this cellphone.

And, you know, whether --"
It didn't matter to me

that he was a drug addict.
I just wanted him in my life.

So the fact that it was
disconnected the next day...

broke my heart.

Hanson:
I think he always wanted

to have some kind of
relationship with Kim.

He didn't want to lose it,
but he couldn't control himself.

He had a -- He had the devil
in him when he was born,

I guess,
and it was hard to fight it.

And Kim always wanted closure.

She always wanted --
She always said to me,

from, I guess, 16
all the way until she is now,

that she said, "I know,

I know deep down inside,
I'll always talk to him.

I'll always be able to tell him
my piece of this story."

And one day,
we get a phone call,

and the New York Times
are calling us up

and this woman, Nina Bernstein.

And Nina said to me,

"Do you know -- Are you related
to Bruce Hanson?"

I said, "Yeah,
that's my ex-husband."

And she said, "Well, I have
to tell you something."

Bernstein:
It was really shocking to me

to discover
that New York state law,

a law dating back
to the 19th century,

required the city to offer
the bodies of unclaimed dead

to medical schools
for dissection.

♪♪

I learned that there were
22 cadavers

that were in cold storage at
Albert Einstein Medical School.

♪♪

You know, basically,
the-- these cadavers

are just lent
to the medical schools.

They are supposed to then
be returned to the city

for what the city
considers proper burial,

which is a Hart Island trench.

♪♪

I tried very hard to learn
the names of these cadavers

because I wanted
to reclaim their stories.

One of the last of the 22
that day was Bruce Hanson.

♪♪

Even though his body had been
in cold storage for three years,

it had been on lists
sent back and forth

between the medical school and
the medical examiner's office.

The medical examiner's office
had not done the first thing

in terms of
trying to find someone

who knew Bruce Hanson
and would care.

And it was easy.

♪♪

Their job is to be the last

and most important source of
information about this person.

♪♪

They had his name.

They had his name when
he first arrived to the morgue.

They had his name
when they put him on a list

to offer as a cadaver for
dissection at medical school.

♪♪

When I had the name and I did
the first basic search,

it -- it came up immediately,

his ex-wife in New Jersey.

One phone call, and I had her.

One phone call, and I was --

She was carrying the phone
to her daughter.

♪♪

Hanson: Nobody called us.
I never changed my last name.

It's still Hanson. I live
in the same state as New Jersey.

Nina had no problem
calling me up to find out.

♪♪

He shouldn't have
ended up in there.

They shouldn't allow that.

♪♪

And for three years being
in Albert Einstein hospital,

just...you know, going through
their medical procedures

for three years,
putting him in a cold box,

pulling him out,
cutting him up, putting --

It's awful. It's --

It's awful.

Bradshaw:
I'm angry at how it happened.

I'm angry with
the medical examiner,

the hospital,

the people, you know,
that still won't

give me information on him.

You know, it's my father.

I should have a right
to know how he died.

I'm never going to find out.

♪♪

♪♪

The medical examiner's
office calling

to find out what you know,

the hospital not giving --
giving you a hard time

about getting the records.

Everybody's hiding something.

♪♪

So the hospital's working
with the medical examiner,

which is working
with Hart Island.

You know, they obviously
don't want people to know

most of the mistakes
that they made

or things that they just
didn't care about.

Think about all those bums
on the street.

You think they contacted
every single person's family?

They throw them
probably in that island.

[Bell clanging]

♪♪

Rockwell: "The wind rises in
from the sound

carrying the clang of the bell
buoy from nearby City Island,

tolling its fitful warning.

All around is desolate and sad,

no kind hand
to decorate these graves

with trophies of love
and remembrance.

Not even a headstone
to show where is interred

what was once a human being."

♪♪

"No one that sleeps there had
a dollar to their name in life,

few a good word said for them
after death.

The bodies interred here
are as utterly forgotten

and wiped away
as if they never existed.

And yet all those festering,
rotting corpses

which lie below here
once had hopes, ambitions,

likes and dislikes,

tastes, sympathies
like ourselves.

But all that
is not even now a remembrance."

[Bell clangs]

♪♪

Hunt:
You can't help but thinking

when you look into
an empty mass grave

about who's going
to be buried there

and also about
your own mortality.

♪♪

Human beings know
that their lives are limited

and that the reconciliation
of that

is the shaping of a community,

feeling that you're a member
of that community

and that your life is extended
through that community

beyond your own lifetime.

♪♪

And that's, of course,
the first thing

that I saw
going to Hart Island,

was that the inmates,
when they were burying the dead,

they're saying the prayers
to themselves.

There's a hopefulness to that,
that the -- that the people

whose rights
are largely taken away,

they still know how
to commemorate the dead.

♪♪

So we know how to do this stuff

because it's -- it's basic
to who we are.

And the reason we perform
those rituals

is because we all fear
that ourlives might not matter,

that people will forget us.

♪♪

The indifference that exists

comes out of
enough people feeling

that, "Oh, this couldn't
happen to me."

And what I've tried to show

is, in fact,
it happens to everyone.

♪♪

All human remains
in New York City,

if they are not
claimed by family,

must be buried on Hart Island.
That's the only option.

All human remains
go to Hart Island.

Still, not everyone
is accounted for.

So then what happens?
We don't know.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

De Jesus: New York City
is just for vacation.

New York City is just
to come and have fun.

New York City is not a place
to actually be living in.

♪♪

It's nothing.

♪♪

Flanzig: Hey, Katrina. So,
I wanted to bring you in today

and talk a little bit about
where we are with the case,

and the position and arguments
the City's making

and the fight that I'm having
with the city, which continues.

And I told them what you and I
have talked about before.

Like, if you tell us
where the baby is,

we'll drop the lawsuit today.
That's what this is all about.

That's why we're
trying to find out.

They don't believe us.
I think it's about money.

It's not. It's about
a search for the truth.

One of the issues
for the city here, Katrina, is

if we establish here
that they don't know,

there are other cases like yours
that are out there pending,

and they don't want
to make bad law.

They don't want
to make bad precedent.

So the further they could
push us back and slow us down,

the latter that those bad things
will happen to the city.

So part of their delay is to
not let this case come to trial,

because there are other cases

that are going to follow
shortly behind.

Yeah, but I feel that
they really ain't doing much

because all they thinking
is about the money.

Yeah.And honestly, like I said,

I'm not doing this
for money.

I want my son back.
That's it.

♪♪

Flanzig: What we know right now
from the records that we have

is that autopsy was performed.

The body at some point
was at the morgue.

We do have some indication
on one of the records

that the body was released
for transport.

At this point, we don't know
if it was transport

to some type of medical facility
for research.

We don't know where
that baby was released to.

We know where the baby
was supposed to be released to,

and that's to Hart Island.

♪♪

Any case that I'm involved in
with the city of New York

is always going
to take me years.

Getting records
out of the city of New York

requires motion after motion
after motion

for a judge
to compel them to respond.

They're more concerned
with security issues

and welfare issues
and housing issues

and all the things
that make this city

a unique and crazy place.

So most likely, I won't --
No matter how much we fight,

we ain't gonna
never have an answer.I can never guarantee you

that I'm gonna give you
an answer to that question.

And I know that's
the most important thing to you,

and that's been
the focus of my case,

has always been about
getting you those answers.

[Sighs]

Okay. [Sniffles]

Well, I guess we gonna
keep fighting, then.

I need answers.

♪♪

De Jesus: I've been in New York
since I was 15.

And I was never a fan
to New York.

I came out here because
I was mandated to come over here

with my stepmother.

But she ended up leaving me,
so I've been by myself

since I was 15 out here.

It's been a rough life.

Me being out here
has been real rough,

'cause everybody that has come
into my life has left right out.

Nobody stays in my life.

The only people that stays
in my life is my kids.

♪♪

You know,
it bothers me a little bit,

because the story went out
in the newspaper,

and the comments
that they've been putting?

Horrifying.
They really, like, put me down,

that I'm doing
all of this for money.

And I'm like...

"What money?
I didn't even ask for money."

♪♪

♪♪

Everybody just think
about their tax money.

How did I decided
to keep having kids,

knowing that I'm not
financially stable?

♪♪

That doesn't mean anything.

I'm poor,
and that's how I always been,

and that's how
I'm gonna keep living.

I'm not planning on being rich.

♪♪

[People cheering in distance]

[Drums playing in distance]

Sweat: Why did my forefathers
come to Hart Island

to join the Union army?

They came for one cry --

to be free, equal men, period.

♪♪

And I feel very emotional
about it, because...

not only are the soldiers
interred here,

but so is my daughter.

I named her Aisha.

♪♪

We ponder ourselves
with many questions

about our daughter.

So we hope to bring closure
to our family

and to bring honor, love,
and respect to a soul

that we haven't had the
opportunity to honor properly

for almost 50 years to this day.

♪♪

To not to have touched the earth
that she's buried in,

it behooves me to go over there

to lay the first wreath
at her grave site

and pay my respects
to my daughter

who is buried on Hart Island

in potter's field
of the city of New York.

♪♪

Then I can continue my plight

to bring the honor, respect,

and some type
of fitting memorial statue

over on Hart Island

for these soldiers
of the Civil War.

♪♪

♪♪

[Indistinct conversations]

[Both laugh]

[Laughs, speaks Spanish]

Yeah. Sí.After a long time.

[Speaking Spanish]

Very happy to be here.

[Speaking Spanish]

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you
for sharing your story.

[Translating into Spanish]I think it was very important.

[Laughs]So here you are.

[Indistinct conversations]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Bernstein: The most satisfying
part of this reporting

has been that,
armed with knowledge,

people can change the ending.

Hi. Hello. How are you?Ferrer: Hello. Buenos dias.

How are you?
Come on in.

Gracias.

How are you?

This wasn't an investigation
where you got a smoking gun

and you could go
for the jugular.

This is the one bad guy.

It's just not like that.

Yes, there's some guardians
who really didn't do their job.

And the medical examiner's
office systemically

is not doing a proper job
in many of these cases.

♪♪

Many factors have led
to this place,

and it's really embedded
in the -- in a lot of history.

But to have a city this modern,
this cosmopolitan

that still buries
the unclaimed dead

the way Jacob Riis recorded

in the 19th century

just doesn't make sense.

♪♪

It's archaic, it's bizarre,

and yet it also represents
a truth about America,

about the Western world,
perhaps,

that this tremendous inequality
not only still exists,

but has -- has widened.

♪♪

Hanson: I mean, I wish life
would have turned around.

I wish the rehabs
would have worked.

I wish he would have
kept the family,

because we all still loved him.

He couldn't help what he --
what he turned out to be.

She always felt that sorrow
in her heart,

like, "Did I do that?"
No, you didn't do that, Kim.

It was him doing that. It had
nothing to do with you at all,

because he did love you.

He did love her. He did.

Bradshaw:
My worry about having a child

is that I will -- I will
give my child my issues.

I don't want to --

I don't want to screw up
my child like I was.

[Children chattering
in distance]

♪♪

There will always be emptiness.

I'll never feel complete.

♪♪

I could have just told him...

how I felt and how he destroyed
a lot of my life,

because he did.

And, of course,
I wanted something from him.

I wanted something--
a reason why or that he's sorry

or something, like,
a little inch of him caring,

which I'll never get.

So...it sucks.

♪♪

♪♪

Sante:
New York still has the draw.

It's still a name
to conjure with.

It still sounds a musical note

to people in some distant
part of the world.

♪♪

New York is distinct.

New York has always
gone its own way.

[Indistinct conversations]

New York has
its own bitter humor...

♪♪

...its own kind of culture,
its own kind of literacy.

New York is not sentimental,
because the city does not care.

The city does not
care about you.

♪♪

That is one of the attractions
of New York City, of course,

is that it's this monster
you have to fight.

♪♪

You have to actually
wrestle with the city

in order to just get the very
basic necessities of life.

♪♪

And so the idea of the city

having something
on its conscience,

this is a rather
small blot, frankly.

I mean, with all honor
to the dead, they aredead.

♪♪

♪♪

Levine: I think that the city
has always wanted to forget

about Hart Island.

The city has wanted to forget

about the people
who are buried there.

It's wanted to forget
about the fact

that there is
a potter's field,

that there is a place where
difficult stories are hidden.

♪♪

New York City is celebrated

as the place where anyone
can achieve their dreams,

but those dreams haven't
been achieved by everyone.

♪♪

It's true of people
toiling away,

digging out the tunnels
for subways

or building our skyscrapers.

♪♪

It's true of people
who have wound up homeless

or because a society
shunned them,

as happened during
the AIDS epidemic.

♪♪

Those stories might not
be flattering to tell.

Even more, it might tell us
things about our present

that we'd rather not face.

♪♪

But we owe it to the people
who have been buried there

and are being buried there
to bring their stories to light.

♪♪

Crowley: So, my bill to move the
jurisdiction of Hart Island --

I believe that we're at a place
where we could finally --

The momentum is growing

to make Hart Island a public
place that is not forgotten.

♪♪

One million New Yorkers
who built this city,

who made this city
the city that it is today,

they should not be forgotten.

They need a better space
to be resting in.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Hey.Hey! [Laughs]

[Laughing]

[Speaking Spanish]

[All speaking Spanish]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[All speaking Spanish]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪