The Long Shadow (2017) - full transcript

[insects chirping]

[♪♪♪]

JOHN POWELL:
You can't understand
the United States history

without understanding
the role that slavery played.

It was already
a very formal institution

by the time United States
became a nation.

It actually defined the nation.

IAN HANEY LOPEZ:
Slavery didn't
just end and go away.

We as a country were formed out
of a compromise with slavery.

The southern colonies were not
willing to be part of a union,

part of a national government



unless the institution
of slavery was protected

and the price of protecting
that institution

was disproportionate power
to the South politically

and it carries through today.

JODY ALLEN:
We possibly could have lightened
some of the consequences

of slavery if there had not
been such a concerted effort

to maintain the differences
between blacks and whites.

It's kind of like an infection,
I think. It may go away

but it always bubbles back
up to the top eventually.

I think that's
what's happening now.

[alarm blaring]

[explosions]

[indistinct shouting]

- What do we want?
- Justice!



- When do we want it?
- Now!

MAN: They're mad. I'm mad.
We should all be mad, man.

We should all be angry because
of what's going on right now.

NEWS ANCHOR: Law enforcement sources tell CNN, Roof admitted

that he shot worshippers
in cold blood

as they gathered
for a Bible study, Wednesday

at historic Emanuel AME Church.

He's chilling motive, one source tells CNN that the 21 year-old

wanted to start a race war.

FRANCES CAUSEY: God, nothing ever changes here.

Why does this keep
happening over and over again?

I was born in Greensboro,
North Carolina in 1963

into a world where
white superiority

was rarely questioned.

As a child, the only black
people I ever interacted with

in a meaningful way were
the people who worked for us.

I loved them like family.

I felt a huge amount of sadness as a kid

seeing how they
and other African-Americans

were treated in the South.

I didn't understand it.

I knew something
was deeply wrong

but it was not okay
to talk about it.

My longtime friend and producing partner, Sally Holst and I

shared a similar upbringing.

SALLY HOLST:
You know, I felt it.

It was confusion.
It was crazy-making and anger.

CAUSEY: Like Sally, the sorrow,
anger and lingering questions

about the racist South
of my childhood

shadowed me into adulthood.

I never understood how much
my own uncomfortable journey

to talk about this

was connected to an untold
history of our nation.

It's hard to be black in a world controlled by white folks.

Du Bois said, we always
have the double consciousness.

We're trying to be black and meanwhile, you got a white ghost

hovering over your head
that says,

"If you don't do this,
you'll get killed.

If you don't do this,
you won't get no money.

If you don't do this, nobody
would think you're beautiful.

If you don't do this, nobody
would think you're smart."

That's the ghost.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: The transatlantic
slave trade took off

in the early 18th century
and produced huge profits.

[♪♪♪]

GERALD HORNE: One of the reasons
why the United States

is such an advanced country

is because of not only slavery
but the slave trade.

We know that slavery
was financed from places

like New York, Rhode Island,
Newport and Boston.

CAUSEY:
One of the reasons Wall Street
was created in the first place

was to finance
the slave industry.

Everything from buying slaves
to even mortgaging them.

HORNE: What you see is not only
the building of more ships

which employs workers.

You're seeing the building
of insurance companies

because Africans are revolting

and you need to have
insurance policies.

You see the construction
of banking

because these voyages
have to be financed

and therein, you begin
to see the seeds, the kernels

of an advanced economic system

and the rise of capitalism is
clearly on the backs of slavery

and the enslaved Africans.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: It was astonishing to me that many of the first Africans

in the American colonies weren't slaves but indentured servants.

For a while,
poor blacks and whites

worked alongside each other.

POWELL:
The connection between
Europeans and Africans

was actually quite robust.

A lot of marriages
formally and informally.

A lot of children
formally and informally.

Probably much greater
integration

between people of African
descent and European descent

than we have today.

CAUSEY:
Indentured whites and blacks
worked for their masters

for five to seven years.

Africans went from
indentured servitude

to enslavement gradually.

One colony, one person
and one law at a time.

PAUL KIVEL: It started with
the dispossession

of Native Americans.
So to the concept that

they didn't actually have title
to the land or deserve the land

because they weren't Christians.

So all of U.S. law around land
and the accumulation of land

by the English and French and
Spanish was based upon that.

Europeans felt completely
comfortable going into Africa

and enslaving people who are
also heathens, non-Christians

and bringing them to the
new world, to South and Central

and North America and so
slavery was justified by this.

It allowed the conquerors
to feel righteous that

they were in fact doing favors
to whoever they encountered.

It was all redefined as
a benevolent process.

POWELL: To most people's mind,
America means white.

The country was founded by
two groups, Anglos and Saxons,

Christian protestant,
English-speaking.

So all these things
get bound up together.

KIVEL: Just being Christian
was not distinction enough

to separate who was entitled
to civil rights

and respect and resources.

So Christianity became
divided into white Christians --

really, white male Christians --
then everybody else.

There was a racial supremacy

and a religious supremacy
intertwined.

[bell tolls]

CAUSEY:
Yet 1,000 black and white
Virginians rose up together

in rebellion against
rich planters in 1676.

The rebels wanted more wealth
and power in the new America.

Nathaniel Bacon
led the uprising.

POWELL: The Bacon Rebellion was
about the political movement

and economic movement.

It was people
demanding democracy,

a chance to participate
in running the colony,

Virginia colony
and demanding land.

ALLEN: There are these people
coming together

more along class lines
than race lines.

And even though
the colonial government

was eventually successful,
I think that really scared them.

POWELL: The elite decided
to split those groups

and start creating whiteness
in the colonies

and part of their charge,

all the men was to be drafted
into slave patrol

to manage the slaves
for the elites

and they always had this role
of allegiance to the elites

and managing those
underneath for the elites.

ALLEN: This notion
of divide and conquer

to keep poor whites
always knowing

that they were
not at the bottom.

No matter how degraded you may
be as a white, you're white.

And there's one group below you.

That seems very simple enough
but it was a very heavy curse.

CAUSEY: Virginia, where my
ancestors originally settled,

was the first colony to pass
harsher slave laws

that legally sealed
this new alliance

between rich planters
and poor whites.

The first kind of
white privilege that we see

in this country is what was
given to indentured servants

as they were freed up
to have some land,

to have the ability
to be in the militia,

in the slave patrols
to get cloth and tools

and other things
when they were released.

They just still didn't have
economic power

but they had benefits
as white people

and at the same time,
enslaved Africans had nothing.

They had no rights, no property.
Nothing in their name at all.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: Growing up, I knew both sides of my family owned slaves

but there was never much
of a conversation about it.

Our family history haunted me
enough to make this film.

My most famous ancestor was
a guy named Edmund Pendleton

who was a judge,
planter and slave owner.

Pendleton was my uncle
six times removed.

I had known a bit
about Pendleton's life

but in my research
for this film,

I discovered more details
than I ever bargained for.

ANNE CONKLING:
Pendleton was tall, handsome.

He was charming.

He was a brilliant man.

He was an arch-conservative,

what we would today
call right-wing extremist.

He went from being
an arch-conservative

to being a spokesman
for the revolution.

[♪♪♪]

[gunfire]

CAUSEY:
Pendleton became the first governor of the Virginia Colony.

And I was kind of proud to learn
that he played a major role

in helping to establish
the new nation.

CONKLING:
Pendleton drafts the Virginia
Resolution for Independence

and that says that the
delegation be instructed

to propose to declare
the united colonies free

and independent states
absolved from all allegiance

or dependence upon the crown
or parliament of Great Britain.

He wrote all those words
which were then given

to a Pony Express rider who
carried them to Philadelphia.

When they got to Philadelphia,
they said,

Virginia says independence

and all the other colonies
fell into place.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY:
But I was really disturbed
to learn that Pendleton

was also asked to write
a controversial line

in the Virginia
Declaration of Rights.

Words that would
institutionalize white supremacy

and reverberate
throughout U.S. history.

I have written
a little bit about

Virginia founder,
Edmund Pendleton

and there's not a lot of people
that know very much

about Edmund Pendleton and
Frances is related to Edmund.

As I understand the history,
they said, "Wait a minute.

We can't have these principles
of liberty applying to slaves."

And so he comes up with the line
basically that signals

in kind of coded language
to the other slave owners

that they're going to exclude
the slaves from liberty.

That all men by nature are
equally free and independent

and have certain rights.

And he came up with the line,

"When they enter into
a state of society"

which everyone
understood to mean

that the slaves
would be excluded.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: Slaves weren't
even considered human.

So how would they ever be accepted into civil society?

But still, slavery
was controversial.

I wondered, did Pendleton
and the other founding fathers

have a more pressing reason
to break from Great Britain?

HORNE: London had moved
in Somerset's Case in 1772

to abolish slavery
within England.

There was a lot of fear
and suspicion

on this side of the Atlantic

that that particular decision
would have legs.

CAUSEY: I was always taught
the Revolutionary War

was about things
like freedom

and taxation without
representation.

So was independence
from Great Britain

really much more about
preserving slavery?

KIVEL: Almost every founding
father was a slave owner.

Slavery was an integral part
not just of the Southern economy

but the entire Northern economy.

So it was just completely
integrated into the thinking

of the wealthy men
that wrote the Constitution.

MIKE CHURCH: So the fact that
the constitution is a perfect

instrument is just bogus
from the start if you admit

and this is the only truth that
you can arrive at

and because it did not
ban the slavery

and it left it in there

and it left it as an
open-ended question.

Slavery is definitely
one of the root causes

of the current political melees
that we have today.

CAUSEY: My uncle led
Virginia's ratification

of the U.S. Constitution in 1788

which included
the Three-Fifths Compromise.

Slaves were counted
as three-fifths of a voter.

Those slaves couldn't vote.

Because the South had
more slaves than the North,

this gave the South one third
more congressional seats

and electoral votes
for the next 73 years.

Slaveholding interest would
dominate the government

until the outbreak
of the Civil War.

Not surprisingly, five of the first seven U.S. presidents

were from the South
and were slave owners.

HORNE: The stories
have done a disservice

because you would think that
there are all these genteel men

with wigs and bringing ideas

or coming up with all of these
projects and plans.

Yes, they get their hands dirty
fighting the redcoats

but then it's back to dreaming
up Bill of Rights

and constitutions
and other brilliant ideas

and without the sort of muck
and the grime and the dirt

and the blood that's being
shed to build this society.

CAUSEY:
But many more slaves than
is commonly acknowledged

resisted the brutality
or tried to escape.

Others organized and rebelled
against their treatment.

A successful and bloody
revolution led by slaves

in nearby Haiti established
the first black-led Republic

in the world.

This revolt terrified American
slave owners like my ancestors

who feared slave rebellions
would spread to the U.S.

I imagine that's why
we never learned much

about the Haitian revolution
in school.

HORNE: The Haitian Revolution
puts the fear of God,

if I may use that phrase into
the brains of slave owners.

It's a major factor in shedding
light on this Negrophobia,

this fear and hatred
of Africans.

You not only have to think
about the classic slave revolts.

Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey,
Gabriel Prosser.

This free labor
comes with a price.

It comes with a price
of having your throat slit

in the middle of the night.

It comes with the price of
eating your scrambled eggs

in the morning and then keeling
over and dying from the poison.

It comes with a price of your
house going up in flames

and your barn
going up in flames

and all the crops going up in
flames by rebellious Africans.

The kind of tumult that
is gripping North America.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: In the midst
of this national nightmare,

there were white people
who opposed slavery.

There was a growing unease that
this might actually be wrong.

That morally,
it was hard to justify.

CAUSEY: Five Northern states had started to either eliminate

or gradually abolish slavery

and in Virginia of all places,

I discovered a powerful and unusual story from that era

which had been lost to history.

TOM DUCKENFIELD:
We're in Nomini Hall Estate in
Westmoreland County, Virginia.

This is an estate that was
owned by Robert Carter III.

A man who manumitted,
freed my ancestors

with a deed of manumission
in 1791.

So all around here are the land
where my ancestors lived

and worked as slaves

and were eventually freed
gradually over 20 years.

KIVEL:
Carter is a very good example
of one of the richest landowners

in the country who saw
that slavery was wrong

and did something about it.

CAUSEY:
Though he was widely condemned
by other slave owners

and even his own family,

Carter gradually freed
all 452 of his slaves.

LA TONYA LAWSON-JONES:
You can see it in the actual
verbiage of the deed of gift.

He talks about the fact
that he felt

that it was against the
principles of religious justice.

He literally believed that
it was not God's will

to have slaves.

Several of my ancestors
were on that original first 15

that he freed.

One, specifically, Chris Newman.

She was born in 1742
here in America

and she lived here
at Nomini Hall.

When she was freed,
she was 49 years old.

She was a weaver.

DUCKENFIELD:
As freed African Americans,
we had certain advantages.

We had the liberty to go
where we wanted to go.

We had the liberty to work
as much as we wanted to,

to thrive, to provide
for our families.

So we see John Thompson Sr.
owning land

shortly after he was manumitted.

Before that, he owned
personal property items

like horses, pigs, implements,
farm tools, that sort of thing,

but he actually began
to own land about 1820.

CAUSEY:
Tom and La Tonya's ancestors had a very different experience

than most Africans in America.

Not until President
Abraham Lincoln's

Emancipation Proclamation
70 years later

were so many slaves freed.

What would our country
look like today

if others had followed
in Carter's footsteps?

But we didn't.

Instead, we deepened our
commitment to slavery

with even harsher laws.

Sadly, one of the main
architects of those laws

was my uncle, Edmund Pendleton.

DUCKENFIELD:
If you were freed,
you would have to register

with the county,
put down your height

and any distinguishing features.

This was to make sure that
you restricted what they did.

You knew where they were.

LAWSON-JONES:
The laws were so convoluted.

If you went into debt, you
could become a slave again.

If someone brought
a case against you,

you could become a slave again.

CAUSEY:
International pressure and the
successful revolution in Haiti

forced the U.S. Congress to ban the importation of new slaves.

So what did Southern
slave owners do

to maintain and grow
their profits?

They bred more and more slaves.

If you travel in Virginia today
-- I think it's Charles City

which is not that far
from Richmond --

you'll find evidences
today of Virginia

as this great breeding colony
where you're breeding Africans

like you're breeding cattle.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY:
The demand for slaves exploded

because of Eli Whitney's
invention of the cotton gin.

Cotton became the most
profitable commodity

in the world.

In this era, one million out
of the two million slaves

in the U.S. were brutally
separated from their families

and forcibly marched to the Deep South to plant and pick cotton.

This site that blends into
the bustling city landscape

of New Orleans

was one of the nation's busiest slave auction blocks.

Yet there was not even
a plaque or a marker

that acknowledged the suffering that took place here.

This denial bothered me deeply.

It felt like a whitewashing
of history

but this was very familiar.

This version of history was
peddled to me in school books

throughout my childhood.

I felt haunted by the spirits
of the slaves

who had been so terrorized here.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

The frenzy for profits
produced by cotton

and the sale of slaves
in the new states

also increased the physical
violence against them.

More productivity came
through extreme punishment

with overseers even calculating how many lashes on the back

of a slave might generate
one more pound of cotton.

This cruelty and the forced
separation from their families

led more slaves
to try to escape.

[♪♪♪]

POWELL:
The United States Supreme Court
sanctioned a law,

The Fugitive Slave Law
that requires the country

to hunt slaves no matter
where they are.

There's no provision
for that in the constitution.

So we had this
extremely broad reading

of the rights of slave owners
which basically says,

the state can deputize every
citizen in the United States

to hunt down slavery

whether you're in
a slave state or not.

The country is going to all
this length to protect slavery.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY:
By now, I was seeing
a deeply troubling pattern

in our history.

White people, whether
they owned slaves are not,

clearly had a stake
in making sure

that the majority of blacks
were maintained as slaves.

♪ Run, run run

♪ You better run
[Better run, better run]

CAUSEY: But what Sally and I discovered was that just one step

over the border in Canada,

they were offering
Africans from the U.S.

the possibility of
a radically different life.

♪ You better run

JOHN ADAMS:
Canada was originally
a British Colony.

So we had to abide by
the laws of England.

Automatically, by the 1830s,

there was no slavery allowed
in what is now Canada.

♪ Steal away

♪ Steal away

♪ Steal away

♪ To Jesus

- Now, this is Sylvia?
- This is Sylvia.

Okay. So she's your
great grandmother, right?

She's my great grandmother.

And she was the mother
of my mother's mother

and she never talked to us
about being free.

We just knew she was happy.

CAUSEY:
We met up with the great
granddaughter of Sylvia Stark,

a former slave
who lived to be 105.

Sylvia was the youngest child
of Howard and Hannah Estes

who were born into slavery
in Missouri.

- And this is Howard.
- Yes.

The patriarch of the family,
Howard Estes.

ADAMS: The Estes and Stark
family's history

is a rather complicated one.

It starts in Missouri.

Howard's master wanted
to send a herd of cattle

over the mountains to California
during the big Gold Rush

after 1849 and Howard was asked
to accompany the master's son

and he could stay there
and earn some money

and purchase his freedom

which was going to be
a thousand dollars.

CAUSEY: Howard Estes managed
to buy his family's freedom

receiving in return
their freedom papers.

These are the papers
that freed them

and this is all written here.

- And to have this.
- Yes. Yes.

Wow.

SIMS:
So these papers were written up

so that they'd have proof
that they were freed slaves.

It says, "Know all men by these
present that I Howard Estes

of the County of Clay in the
State of Missouri have..."

KAREN ALEXANDER: They arrived
in time to find some gold

but the blacks
that were in California

were now getting fearful
that California

which was admitted to the
United States nine years earlier

was now in danger
of becoming a slave state.

So the blacks were quite afraid.

CAUSEY: At the same time
a slave named Dred Scott

who had been taken by his
owner to non-slave states

claimed that he was there
for free

and entitled to US citizenship.

Scott sued but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him.

POWELL:
Chief Justice Taney said,
"No blacks free or otherwise

could ever be a citizen
of United States."

And it was the first time
the Supreme Court

dealt with citizenship and
went to great length to say that

blacks were never meant to be
part of the political community.

ADAMS:
The situation in California
where they were ostensibly free

was beginning to heat up.

So the Fugitive Slave Act,
the Dred Scott decision

and then individual decisions
in places like San Francisco

that banned black children
from attending school

made it apparently very, very
difficult for some of them.

So they wrote a letter.
Can you imagine that?

Wrote a letter
to Governor James Douglas

and told them what
they were going through

and that they needed
a place to live.

CAUSEY:
The first governor of British
Columbia, James Douglas,

was born in Africa.

His mother was mixed race
and his father was Scottish.

Douglas frequently
identified as black.

He wrote him back and said,
"Bring all of them.

If you want to come,
come to Canada."

He said, "We have a big country

and we're trying
to make it grow."

CAUSEY: By 1860, Sylvia Estes
had married farmer Lewis Stark

in California
and they had two children.

They were among 800 free blacks

who accepted the invitation
from Governor Douglas.

[♪♪♪]

SIMS: He rode over here
and he saw this island,

this beautiful island
and there was nobody on it.

And she says,
"That's where I want to go."

And they preempted land
in three spots on Salt Spring.

This is the one
she loved the most

and this is where
she made her life.

CAUSEY:
I was inspired by Sylvia's
grit and inner strength.

SIMS:
Granny made her own soap.

She made her own butter

but she had a machine
where she could cord

and do her own weaving.

She did all of that herself.

ALEXANDER: When they arrived,
they were offered land.

They were told they
could live here free.

There was no slavery
in this part of the world.

And most of them stayed here
and farmed

and raised their families
and had a fairly good life.

[♪♪♪]

ADAMS:
Many of them opened businesses

and very quickly, many of them
became citizens

and they voted and one quickly
became elected to city council.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: The stories of these courageous black pioneers in Canada

contradicted every stereotype
I was exposed to

growing up in the South.

A culture that insisted that blacks were lazy, unintelligent

and incapable of
managing their own lives.

The new black Canadians
made obvious

just how much of a lie this was.

♪ I got religion

♪ Oh, I got religion

♪ Oh, I got religion

ALEXANDER:
This church was built by Charles
Alexander from his design

with the farmers
of the neighborhood.

So all farmers, no matter who
you were, what you were,

were able to attend this church.

ADAMS:
The integration was very real.

But in fact,
there was discrimination,

personal discrimination.

Some blacks were not allowed
to go into certain theaters

or drink in certain bars.

CAUSEY: Just as the California Gold Rush was ending,

a major gold vein was discovered in British Columbia.

It brought a familiar foe
to the black community:

U.S. Southerners.

Were free blacks safe anywhere?

LORNE HAMMOND:
There were whites with views
from the American South

who came up and they were not
open to sharing the land

or their businesses or their
theaters or their saloons

or what have you
with the African,

now, African-Canadian community.

CAUSEY:
Canada had become a haven for Southern Civil War criminals

now on the run from that
crushing American conflict

which began in 1861.

Hanging in the balance
were the lives of four million

enslaved human beings in the
U.S. whose monetary value

now exceeded that
of all manufacturing

and commercial enterprises
combined.

[♪♪♪]

Seven slave states had broken
away from the U.S.

forming the Confederacy.

[cannon fires]

America's Civil War was fought
for four horrific years

to save the Union.

When I was young, I heard
stories about how bravely

my ancestors fought

and how much the family lost in the war of Northern aggression.

To win the war,
President Abraham Lincoln

issued his Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863.

Freeing Southern slaves so they could fight for the union.

Only with the war's end were
Northern slaves finally freed.

LEON LITWACK:
What happened at the moment,
black men and women are told,

you're no longer slaves.

You're free. You can do
whatever you want to do.

It's a great moment.
Great moment in our history.

This is called sometimes
The Day of Jubilee.

Well, there's no real jubilee
because everybody was uncertain.

Blacks were uncertain and
they did say, how free is free?

How free is free?

ALLEN:
The idea that these four million
people were set free

without any kind of reparation.

They had worked,
their ancestors had worked.

They helped to build all of the
institutions that we think about

in the South and in the North
before the Revolution

and they received nothing.

CAUSEY: Northern General,
William Sherman

understood the desperate
plight of the freed slaves.

He gave 40,000 of them
40 acres of land and a mule.

But even today,
many people don't know

that President Andrew Johnson,
a former slave holder

who had succeeded the
assassinated Abraham Lincoln

quickly revoked that.

Evicting blacks from their land.

White settlers were getting
cheap land in the West

under the Homestead Act.

Understandably, freed blacks
wanted land in the South

where most of them
still lived but instead,

the federal government
abandoned the freed slaves

and sold confiscated Southern
land to Northern whites

and the railroads.

ALLEN:
There is a fear and I think
rightly so that Southerners

were not going to necessarily
treat slaves as equal citizens

regardless of the laws
that were passed.

They were going to need
some support behind that.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY:
Pressured by abolitionists,
the federal government amended

the Constitution by passing the Reconstruction Amendments

which officially ended slavery

and gave U.S. citizenship
to ex-slaves.

The amendments were supposed to protect freed slaves against

future discrimination.

POWELL:
The 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendment was designed to try

to interrupt the institution
of slavery which requires

a re-articulation
of the entire country

and the entire
country identity.

Not just for the South
but for the entire country.

[♪♪♪]

What happened
in the Reconstruction,

more important
than anything else,

that black men, women
to some extent

but black men learned to use
his political power.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: By 1870,
black males could now vote

and vote they did
in record numbers.

Three blacks were even
elected to the U.S. Senate.

Not until 1967 was another black elected as a U.S. Senator.

[♪♪♪]

Blacks organized themselves
into a political force

through meetings
at their churches.

Black churches like the African Methodist Episcopal Church

would continue the fight
for equal rights.

LITWACK: Then to succeed
in this aspiration,

what the whites feared more
than anything else that

Reconstruction might succeed in
reordering Southern society.

Whites had an intense hatred for
blacks who wanted to get ahead.

A successful black
was a dangerous black.

An incompetent and illiterate
black posed no threat.

His labor was valuable but the
black who got out of his place,

who aspired to anything above
the place to which

he had been assigned,
that is the kind of black

that whites could not tolerate.

[♪♪♪]

POWELL:
So the country started in that
road and then they reneged.

And they decided to basically
to create another expression

of racial dominance.

ALLEN: The Southerners
wanted to control

these four million people
that have been freed.

They still needed them
to do the work.

They also needed them
to understand

and to know their place

and this was something
that even Northerners

would come to understand
and agree with

that the states were really free
to do whatever they wanted to do

in terms of controlling
this inferior people

as they continued to see them.

CAUSEY:
Without federal enforcement

of the new civil rights
legislation,

the states enacted
the Black Codes.

These punitive laws restricted
the movement of blacks,

rigged the labor economy
against them

and doomed them
to low wages and debt.

The laws also open the door
to the widespread use

of convict leasing which was
just another form of slavery.

So if you broke these laws, then
you could be in prison for it.

And so then that starts the
cycle of people going to prison

for really trivial reasons but
getting caught up in the system

because then if a white
landholder or businessperson

paid their fine, then they
had to work off that fine.

And so you could be years,
maybe for the rest of your life

in these situations
because these people

were not an investment like
they had been during slavery

so you can work them to death,
get them replaced and move on.

CAUSEY: The Plessy v. Ferguson
Supreme Court decision in 1896

created separate but equal,

the legal separation
between black and white.

It's always been hard for me to believe that these so-called

Jim Crow Laws
that blatantly discriminated

against African-Americans
remained in place until 1964.

Jim Crow created America's
own system of apartheid.

ALLEN: Jim Crow was really
born in the South.

Although it would go north
certainly

but in the South,
it would become legal.

It would become part
of state laws, local laws.

Everything from separate Bibles
for people to swear on in court.

I interviewed a lady once.

She told me she worked
in a shirt factory

and they had separate
coat hooks.

They had separate bathrooms.

They had separate cemeteries.

Everything that you can imagine.

Intermarrying was illegal to do

and these were codified
in the South.

In the North, they became
kind of part of the custom

but not necessarily
part of the law.

[♪♪♪]

HORNE: I think it's fair
to say that Dixie,

the so-called White South

has left a very deep imprint
on the political culture

of the United States.

It was defeated militarily
doing the Civil War

but not defeated politically

because its white supremacist
ideas were not defeated

and in fact, it seems as if
the part of the reconciliation

between Dixie
and the rest of the country

is to give Dixie a pass.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: The South had lost
nearly everything in the war

but we refused to surrender.

Instead, we united around
a strange myth

known as The Lost Cause.

I grew up surrounded by it.

It was always the Yankees or the War of Northern Aggression.

Life before the war
was romanticized

as one of content slaves
and idyllic plantation life.

Monuments to Confederate
battlefields and generals

were everywhere.

We were a separate people who are superior, distinct and noble

but I always felt that beneath this mask of Southern gentility

and outward politeness

was a culture that was
deeply flawed at its core.

♪ To Southern boys

♪ Who are here today

♪ Our little Southern town

♪ Has blood on the way

♪ It's a way of life

♪ And a lie

If you investigated these
lynchings in a great extent

which I have,

you can't believe that it really
happened in your country,

in this country.

And the country still
stands in great denial.

CAUSEY: More lynchings were
recorded in the United States

from 1890 to the 1920s than at
any other time in our history.

These tactics were used
with terrifying effect

particularly at night
by the notorious

white supremacist group,
the Ku Klux Klan.

The Klan's primary goal
was to keep African-Americans

in their place by any
means necessary.

As a child, the images of these white robed terrorists

really frightened me

just knowing that
they were among us.

Hollywood's first feature film,Birth of a Nation

which romanticized the Ku Klux
Klan was released in 1915.

[♪♪♪]

To protest the film, large
numbers of African-Americans

assembled publicly for the
first time in the 20th century

in Boston and other places.

It was the Southern Klan's
violence and a labor shortage

after World War I that drove
1.6 million African-Americans

from the South
to the North and Midwest.

There, they worked in
the steel mills, railroads,

meatpacking plants
and automobile industry

but poll taxes, literacy tests
and the Klan's intimidation

in the North kept blacks
from voting there.

LITWACK:
You expect nothing from
the federal government.

There are no "good presidents"
during this entire period.

Probably the worst of them
all is Woodrow Wilson

when the nation's capital
assumes the mantle of Jim Crow.

And it's because Wilson,
a deep Virginian

can't stand to see successful
blacks around him.

He makes a point
of demoting them.

Sending them from the offices
to the kitchens

and takes great pride in this.

POWELL: The South is neither
Democrat nor Republican.

The South has always been
a party organized

around racial domination
and white supremacy

and it was one of the things
that made the South so strong

because they had
a single-party state.

ALLEN: You also had
Northern politicians

who pandered to the South
because the South,

as they called it, the Solid
South was such a voting bloc.

If you were a Northern
politician and even if you had

ideas of fairness,
that's not even say equality

but just fairness and that
black people were human beings

but at the same time,
you wanted to win the South

or you needed to win
the South to be elected,

you had to step lightly around
the Southerners.

CAUSEY: The South put this restored national power to work

maintaining the nation's racial
hierarchy with its veto power.

Southern politicians
tarnished the creation

of President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's New Deal.

Roosevelt himself is
a very good example of this,

that he has to make
certain compromises.

He has to tell Walter White
of the NAACP, "I'm sorry.

I can't sign this
anti-lynching bill."

The bill is to make lynching
a federal crime.

That would be a big step.

And the opposition
to that is so intense.

So Roosevelt himself says,

"Look, if I do this
then forget about the New Deal."

CAUSEY: Roosevelt's New Deal
created relief programs

to put people back to work
during the Great Depression

but Southern politicians
made sure

the new federal job
benefits programs --

social security,
the minimum wage,

unemployment insurance
and union organizing --

did not apply to the two primary black vocations of the era,

agricultural
and domestic service.

[♪♪♪]

The jackpot that followed the American victory in World War II

which gave birth to the American
dream, good housing, education

and employment was off-limits
to most African-Americans.

Nowhere was systemic racism
more on display

than in our national
housing policy,

also created by the New Deal.

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN:
It was the government
leading the way in creating

a segregated landscape
in every metropolitan area

in this country.

You had many neighborhoods
with European immigrants,

African-Americans, whites
who came from rural areas

to work in factories
in the same neighborhood

but in fact, what the Public
Works Administration did

with its housing program
was create segregation

when none had existed before.

They built public housing
in those neighborhoods,

demolishing the integrated
neighborhood

to create land for
the public housing

and built segregated
public housing instead.

Returning black World War II
veterans were forced to live

in the segregated housing

because Dixiecrats
vetoed an amendment

in the 1949 Housing Act that
would have reintegrated housing.

[♪♪♪]

LITWACK: This is crazy.
We are fighting a war

supposedly to make this world
safe for democracy.

We're fighting a war
in which the enemy

is a racist Nazi Germany
that's exterminating Jews

and we're being treated
as second-class citizens

here in the United States.

It makes no sense.

CAUSEY:
Even historically oppressed
European ethnic groups

like Italians, Jews
and Irish Americans

were allowed to buy into
the new suburban housing

built for returning
white war veterans.

ROTHSTEIN:
Throughout the country,
mass production builders

got bank loans guaranteed by the
Federal Housing Administration

on condition that no homes
be sold to blacks.

Perhaps the best example
is Levittown in New York.

In Levittown, the builder,
Levitt Company

built 17,000 homes in Nassau
County, east of New York City.

Black veterans were not
permitted to live there.

White veterans were.

CAUSEY:
Good paying industry jobs
followed whites

to the new suburbs.

The white families like mine
who owned their homes

gained several hundred thousand dollars' worth of equity

over decades.

The white middle class was born.

The Federal Housing Authority
made it illegal for lenders

to loan money to blacks
who wanted to buy houses

in white neighborhoods.

Redlining by banks denied
mortgages to black people

even in their own communities.

ALLEN:
If you have a family member
who can pass on to you

a certain amount of money,

then you can start off
buying a home

as opposed to renting
or going to college

as opposed to not
going to college.

So that ability to pass on
wealth quite often is stymied

in the black community
because it hasn't been built

and I think a lot of whites
don't understand

that a lot of blacks weren't
able to make wealth

that they could pass down.

Everyone is starting over
from day one.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY:
About this time, Sally and I were born into a land of plenty

and privilege where the line
between black and white

was very clear.

Slavery has cast a long shadow

in Sally's hometown
of Meridian, Mississippi.

Being here prompts memories
of her beloved housekeeper

and friend, Anneice.

SALLY: And I remember going to
the soda fountain and

then I would sit at
the soda fountain

and Anneice would be
standing behind me

and I'd go, "Why aren't you
sitting with me?"

And she said, "It's okay, honey.
I'll just stay back here."

She had to go into the
bathroom that said coloreds,

sit at the back of the bus,

go to the backdoors
of restaurants.

It made no sense to me

that here was the most
wonderful woman in my life

and she was
being mistreated.

I never understood that.

She took care of us.

She did the laundry.

She cleaned the house
and she cooked.

She did everything from sunup
to sundown five days a week

and she left her six children
at home,

had to make arrangements
for them.

CAUSEY:
I don't know how she did it.

This was our cloistered world

but all around us,
big changes were happening.

Not far from Sally's home,
three civil rights workers

were savagely murdered
in 1964 by the Ku Klux Klan.

Meridian became a flashpoint
for the Civil Rights struggle.

MARTIN LUTHER KING:
We are determined to be free.

We've gone too far to turn back.

Let us be calm.
We are together.

We are not afraid
and we shall overcome.

NEWS ANCHOR: This girl here
was the first negro

apparently of high school age

to show up
at Central High School

the day that the federal court
ordered it integrated.

These changes are coming
faster than I expected.

It's difficult for me. It's
difficult for all Southerners.

And Supreme Court
or no Supreme Court,

we are going to maintain
segregated schools

down in Dixie.

ALLEN:
There was an understanding that
Southerners were not going

to easily give up their control,
their power,

this idea of ending the
inequality between the races.

[spirited singing]

[spirited singing]

ALLEN: There was always
this understanding

that there was going to need
to be this federal intervention

on the level
of a Civil Rights Act,

the Civil Rights Act of 1964
in this case.

LITWACK:
Lyndon Johnson said, when the
Civil Rights bill had passed,

he said, "I wanted this.
I supported it.

But I'm telling you, I think we
probably lost the South."

But Johnson thought
it was worth it.

[fast paced chanting]

JOHNSON: It's not just Negroes
but really, it's all of us

who must overcome
the crippling legacy

of bigotry and injustice

and we shall overcome.

[applause]

CAUSEY: The legal discrimination
against African-Americans

that began in the 1600s
would officially end in 1964

with the enactment
of the Civil Rights Act.

ALLEN: It finally gave some
teeth to the 14th Amendment.

Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act
of '64 was very, very important

because it said that if you were
receiving federal monies,

then you could not discriminate
based on race, gender, religion.

ROTHSTEIN:
The Civil Rights Movement
began to push back against

some of these policies.

Finally in 1968,
a Fair Housing Act was passed

which said that you couldn't
discriminate

in the sale or rental of most
housing in the country.

So for example, Levittown could
no longer bar African-Americans

from moving in.

LOPEZ:
The Civil Rights Movement
succeeds in making

the expressed language of racism
unacceptable publicly.

It's unacceptable
to say publicly,

"I stand for the white man.

I believe in white supremacy."

Now, there are people
saying that

but they are increasingly on
the fringe of American society,

the Klan members,
the sort of redneck racists.

CAUSEY: All across the country,
not just in the South,

expressions of open racism
instead went underground

in the form of coded language
or secret political messaging

meant to appeal
to segregationists.

I shall help make it possible
for you and your families

to walk the streets
of our cities in safety.

NIXON: I'm against busing.

I do not believe
that it serves education

to pick up children that are two or three yearsbehind

children in another
school district

and haul them for a half hour across town to another district.

CAUSEY: After a short stint in
a public elementary school,

I began attending one of the many white segregated academies

that were created in the
1960s after desegregation.

Race relations in the South
were stuck in time.

All around me, there was
resistance to the changes

brought by the Civil Rights Act.

White privilege was finding
a way to maintain itself.

The national pushback against
the Civil Rights Movement

and the laws it helped enact
began right away.

This resistant
eerily mirrored

what happened
after Reconstruction.

Political assassinations and the overturning of policies and laws

gradually destroyed the gains
made by African-Americans.

From the beginning
of our administration,

we've taken strong steps to do
something about this horror.

WOMAN: They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators.

[♪♪♪]

WOMAN: I think that Mississippi
has a long way to go.

There's still such segregation.

It should have changed
by leaps and bounds

and maybe it has by a skip.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: Back here in Meridian, we found an incident that took place

in 2003 that struck us
as an enduring example

of the terrible consequences of not confronting racism directly.

NEWS ANCHOR: The funerals for three Lockheed employee shot to death

earlier this week
were held today

in both Mississippi and Alabama.

Thomas Willis, the father of
three, a Vietnam War vet

who was honored with
the Purple Heart...

CAUSEY: I was immediately
drawn to Thomas Willis.

To me, his life
seemed to personify

the progress that has been made by African-Americans

in the U.S. since the passage
of the Civil Rights Act.

[indistinct conversation]

- Did you know Thomas Willis?
- PETE THREATT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER:
Played softball with Thomas,
friends with Thomas.

Can you tell me about Thomas?
What kind of guy he was?

What impressed me the most
was he had a good work ethic.

He seemed to be
a very stable individual.

ERICA TANKS:
Family-oriented, loving,

strict, firm, fair.

CAUSEY: Thomas Willis was
a father and a grandfather.

For an African-American in the South, he was making good money

in a union job
assembling aircraft wings

for Lockheed Martin,

the largest military contractor in the world.

He took a lot of pride
in what he did

and was very appreciative
of it.

CAUSEY: As a U.S. Government contractor,

Lockheed is barred from
discriminating against people

based on their race,
color or national origin

by Title 6
of the Civil Rights Act.

In 2001, Mr. Willis courageously reported to Lockheed management

that he and his African-American co-workers

were being intimidated by a
white employee, Doug Williams.

Williams work the assembly
line alongside Mr. Willis.

INTERVIEWER: I'm not going
to pull any punches with you.

I'm going to ask you, do you
believe that Doug Williams

was a racist?

THREATT: Check the form.

He had a problem
with blacks in general

and some black specifically.

INTERVIEWER:
Did he ever tell you why he
thought a race war was coming?

He told me on one occasion that he thought that the society

got to the point where the
blacks were given everything

and the white males no longer
had anybody representing us

and he thought that
that was the answer.

Violence was the answer.

They called in an investigator
to determine if there was

any type of racial threats
being made

and Mr. Willis told him exactly
what was going on.

Thomas' comment to me was that
he felt like the company

ought to do something

and that he wasn't going to quit until something was done.

He gave them at least three
examples of death threats

that were racially motivated

and they were directed at blacks
working in the plant.

CAUSEY: Doug Williams was
ordered to attend diversity

and anger management classes
but repeatedly refused to go.

According to his
African-American co-workers,

he continued his racial taunts.

One day, Williams put a
white work booty on his head.

I'm from the South.

Everybody that I know,
know what that signify.

CAUSEY: Some African-American employees assumed he was imitating

the Ku Klux Klan

and reported the incident
to their supervisors.

BLAIR:
He wore that not for a little
while. He wore that all day.

Finally, the assistant plant
manager comes back down

and says, "Doug, Mr. Williams,

you've got to take that
booty off your head."

Their conversation
was quite escalated.

Jack insisting that he pull
the cap off, Doug refusing.

And he wanted to know not
why he had to take it off.

He wanted to know
who had reported him.

He wanted the names.

He did not want to give in
because he thought that

he had been falsely
accused in this situation,

that his intent was not racial.

It was merely the hazing
of the new employee

or a practical joke.

CAUSEY: Without approval from Lockheed, Williams took a week off.

When he did return to work,
he wasn't punished.

Lockheed again ordered him
to diversity class

and again, he refused to go.

BLAIR:
He was having a lot of anger

about what Lockheed Martin
was doing to him.

Went out to his truck,
got his guns and came back

and that's when
the shooting started.

[gunshots]

He had shotgun in his hand,
rifle on his back,

bullets draped around
both sides of him.

And I got a good look
at his eyes

and I'm not going to say
per se he snapped

but there was something
there that was out there.

[gunshots]

THREATT:
Storms in the room, he goes
by numerous white employees,

doesn't shoot anybody and Mickey Fitzgerald, a brave man,

he was a white guy stood up
and said,

"Doug, you don't want
to do this." Doug kills him.

Just pointblank
shot him in the head.

CAUSEY: Williams then shot Sam Cockrell whom Williams believed

had complained to management
about him.

THREATT: And he goes straight to the area where the black co-workers

that he had been
intimidating worked.

He went around and shot us
how he wanted to shoot us,

where he wanted to shoot us.

THREATT:
He stood over Lynette McCall
and she begged for her life.

He shot Thomas Willis in the
back as he was running away.

We stepped over there to see
what Shirley was saying

and she was saying, "He's killed
himself. He's killed himself."

[♪♪♪]

I remember regrouping
emotionally

and it seemed like
I was in a daze.

It was devastating because
we just buried my mother

and I was like,
"This can't be happening."

And, um...

BLAIR:
The police found Thomas.

We got his wallet back

and found the Lockheed Martin
investigator's card in there.

The card was
crinkled and sweaty.

It had been in his
pocket of him working hours.

A lot of events that occurred
in the 18 months,

a lot of water under the bridge
of bad things.

Nothing was happening.

It's like his voice was unheard

and that's what I'm kind
of confused about.

Why did it go unheard?

LAVIRA WILLIS:
Listening to the investigations,

listening to the things my Dad
brought to the table

for Lockheed
and any real person,

any sane person would know
that something's not right.

Why didn't you do more?

BLAIR:
We filed suit for wrongful death

under the Mississippi
Wrongful Death Statute

seeking damages
for Mr. Willis being murdered

in an intentional act.

It went to the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals

which threw the case out
based on the fact

that it was
a workplace accident.

When they ruled it
as accidental,

I know what that word means.

Things happen.

You leave a cord out, you trip.
That's an accident.

You didn't mean
for that to happen.

I understand that.

But this was intentional.

CAUSEY:
At the time of the massacre,

Lockheed held federal
military contracts

worth billions of dollars.

If Lockheed
had been found guilty

of violating Thomas Willis and
his colleagues' civil rights,

it would have lost its lucrative government contracts.

Today, Lockheed is still the
largest employer in the area.

BLAIR: I do think there was
a fairly significant effort

to make sure it didn't
become too public.

CAUSEY: Vietnam veteran and law-abiding citizen, Thomas Willis

played by all the rules

and he was still struck down
by a racist.

If Mr. Willis' circumstances
couldn't protect

his civil rights,
then who or what could?

TANKS: I just wanted
to see justice done.

I needed somebody to say,

"Hey, we will not allow this
to happen again."

♪ Another man done gone

♪ Another man done gone
From the county farm ♪

♪ Another man done gone

How much damage has this
done to communities of color

and the answer is,
enormous, enormous damage.

POWELL: The country is becoming
increasingly diverse.

So the way race plays out today
not just in the South

but the whole country
is this profound anxiety

that a lot of people have,

especially white people have
about growing diversity.

They're quite scared because
they feel like they're about

to lose not simply
their neighborhood

but their sense of self.
Who they are.

So when they talk about
taking America back,

they're not talking about taking
it back from corporations.

They're talking about
taking it back from

the black Muslim foreigner
in the White House.

They're talking about
taking it back from the other.

LITWACK: You see a presidency
almost brought to ruin

by the mere fact of hating him
that intensely.

The Majority Leader
of the Senate,

"We won't do anything
to make it possible

for this person to succeed."
To succeed.

HORNE: We're still suffering
the after-effects

of those two powerful
regimes that comprise

the bulk of U.S. history:
slavery and Jim Crow.

You see it in terms of the
population of our prisons.

The United States imprisons
more people probably

than any other nation on planet
Earth, a disproportionate

percentage of whom are
of African descent.

You see it in healthcare
outcomes

in terms of life expectancy.

You see it in terms of per
capita income on a racial basis.

You see it even where you don't
want to see it in terms of

black preschoolers being
suspended at higher rates

than other preschoolers,
for example.

I think that this culture
has been created

that is still in some ways
punishing and penalizing

Africans with as noted,
no interrogation

of the lingering impact, no
attempt to connect the dots

between slavery, Jim Crow
and the present

and it's criminal

because people are suffering
and people are dying.

♪ Is there anyone
Who can explain to me ♪

♪ About the chains
On fallen men ♪

♪ A king was born

♪ And they put him down

♪ These are the days
When they rise again ♪

♪ These are the days
Of dangerous men ♪

♪ Stand tall

♪ Walk free

♪ Stay with me

♪ Brothers and sisters
Stand tall ♪

♪ Walk free

[♪♪♪]

POWELL:
There are many people who
don't believe in equality.

There are many people who
believe there's a natural order

of things and that
whites are at the top.

And to some extent, I would
argue that we're still fighting

the Civil War and
the South is winning.

ALLEN:
I absolutely think this country
missed the opportunity

to make a real difference
in how we treat each other,

how we think about each other
and I guess quite honestly,

I'm not sure how
it can be fixed.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: Could she be right?

Is there really
no way out of this?

MEGAPHONE: When Eric Garner...

CROWD: When Eric Garner...

MEGAPHONE: Was placed
in an illegal chokehold...

CROWD: Was placed
in an illegal chokehold...

- And murdered.
- And murdered.

CAUSEY:
One thing I know for sure
is that oppression

against African-Americans
has been relentless

throughout our history.

This history is not
just in the past.

It's still very much
alive today.

JUDY SIMS:
The pain is constant whether
you're looking at something

that happened on television

or if you went
to the grocery store.

Mom and I both have been to two
of the popular stores here

on the island and have felt,
as Lynn had talked about

her experience
at the pizza parlor.

So it's not that
we cannot forgive.

It's not easy to forgive.

If someone's standing
on your foot

and they're still standing on it

and every time, again,
that wound gets opened

when we, Ferguson...

We all know what's in the news

and so it's just a constant
reopening of an old wound

that we are still just
incredibly impacted.

The yellow and purple?

I miss him.

TANKS:
I've lost a father through this.

Someone that
I can't see anymore.

INTERVIEWER:
Has the shooting affected you?

TREATT: Yes, it has.

I had to go through
a lot of counseling

to finally feel like that
I turned the corner.

TANKS:
Thirty years, I'm getting better
and I think we all are

but it helps by us being
so close knit.

[indistinct conversation]

I'm going to fight to the end
to try to make

everybody see what's going on.

The silence need to be broken.

We can't embed hate
into one another.

I'm not going to
embed hate into my child.

We need to have an
honest conversation.

LAWSON-JONES:
We need to sit down and put
all of the issues on the table.

Not just the things that
are fuzzy and feel good.

We need to address
the systematic racism

that happens in this country.

We need to dismantle the
institutions that continue

to keep not just
African-Americans

but people of color
in general subjugated

and it's difficult but it's
something that needs to happen.

HORNE: We need an official
government commission

to investigate and interrogate

the lingering impact
of both slavery and Jim Crow.

Perhaps we need also some
way to repair the damage.

LITWACK:
I would think that the
reparations that would be

a practical achievement would
take the form of refurbishing

the black community
in terms of

the quality of schools
and quality of housing.

There's a significant
economic change.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY:
Leveling the playing field
for African-Americans

seems to be one big answer.

We tried this
with reconstruction

and with the
Civil Rights Movement.

We saw what happened with
the pioneering black Canadians

and the freed slaves
of Robert Carter

who made the most
of their opportunities.

Today, their descendants continue to pursue their dreams

in whatever ways they choose.

LAWSON-JONES:
What I found in my research
and dealing with these families

that come from
this manumission,

all of them have this sense
of pride in their family,

the sense of pride
in themselves

and their work and what they do.

DUCKENFIELD:
We obtained certain advantages
from being free people.

If you look at
our family structure,

it stayed pretty intact.

We had two heads
of the household.

LAWSON-JONES: It did in some
ways give us a head start

in that we had to be
self-reliant

far long before other people
of color were free.

That gets instilled
into your family.

It becomes a part
of who you are.

You pass it on to your children
to their children,

their children
and so on and so forth.

[♪♪♪]

POWELL: The hard nut of it
is really whites.

So we had it exactly backwards
in terms of the Negro problem.

We have a white problem
in the United States

and I don't mean this
as a blame and whatever

but I think people won't get
this on their own.

It really takes a lot of work.

This is so deeply in our DNA and
it's reflected in our politics,

the way we do politics,
the way we do our economy

and the way we think
about ourselves.

But we actually need to give
birth to a new white identity,

a white identity that
doesn't need to dominate,

a white identity
that's not totally angst

about being in connection
and relationship with the other,

a white identity that recognizes
that it is the other.

[♪♪♪]

CAUSEY: But to do this,
we have to recognize

that we as white people
have benefited enormously

from our privilege at
the expense of other people.

The cost of this prejudice
and inequality

has come at far too high
a price.

Why are we so afraid
to face the possibility

that we might actually gain
something with true equality?

[♪♪♪]

♪ Oh Lord

♪ I'm strivin'

♪ Tryin' to make it

♪ Through this barren land

♪ Yes, sir

♪ But as I go from day to day

♪ I can hear my Savior say

♪ "Trust me child

♪ Come on
And I'll hold your hand" ♪

♪ I'm comin' up

♪ On the rough side

♪ Of the mountain

♪ I must hold to God

♪ His powerful hand

♪ I'm comin' up

♪ On the rough side

♪ Of the mountain

♪ I'm doin' my best

♪ To make it in

[♪♪♪]

♪ My hopes and my dreams
They are foolish things ♪

♪ In the arms of another man

♪ Civil code
It was built to hold ♪

♪ But it grows cold
So we rise again ♪

♪ These are the days
Of dangerous men ♪

♪ Stand tall

♪ Walk free

♪ Don't let them
Take that away ♪

♪ Stand tall

♪ Walk free

[♪♪♪]

♪ Stand tall

♪ We cannot wait another day

♪ Stand tall

♪ Stand tall

♪ Walk free