Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America (2021) - full transcript

ROBINSON:

If you have ever owned a slave,

please raise your hand.

And there's not one hand going

up anywhere in this theater.

Slavery is not our fault.

We didn't do it.

We didn't cause it.

It's not our responsibility.

But it is our shared history.

[♪♪♪]

And when we try and turn it

into something that it's not...

when we try and make

more light of it than it was,

then we are denying

who we really are,

and we are impeding our ability

to truly move forward

as a community or as a nation.

We're at the Lorraine Motel.

And right outside Room 306,

there's a wreath,

which is approximately

where Dr. King was standing

when he was shot down.

And if you look

across the street,

there's a building over there

from where the shots were fired.

It was a shot

that almost couldn't miss.

[CROWD CLAMORING]

ROBINSON:

Exactly one week

before Dr. King was shot

there was a demonstration here

in Downtown Memphis

to support the striking

sanitation workers,

and my dad took

my older brother and I

to that demonstration.

It broke into violence,

and my dad told us to run.

It's difficult

to think about now,

because there was a young Black

teenager named Larry Payne

who lost his life that day.

He encountered a police officer

and was killed, and...

It's just one of those events

in my childhood

that made me realize

how lucky I was.

Uh, how lucky I was

not to end up like Larry Payne.

And how lucky I was

to have come out of Memphis...

in the way that I did.

[♪♪♪]

KING:

We've gotta give ourselves

to this struggle until the end.

Nothing would be more tragic

than to stop...

at this point in Memphis.

We've gotta see it through.

[CROWD APPLAUDING]

WARREN:

Tonight, Jeff Robinson

will tell us stories

that we've not heard.

Stories that we think we know

but have not wrestled

with their meaning yet.

The story of us.

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up

for Jeff Robinson, y'all.

[CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING]

[BOTH SPEAK INDISTINCTLY]

[CLEARS THROAT]

Hey, y'all.

I was 11 years old in 1968.

And to my young eyes,

we had been on a path toward

racial justice that was amazing.

There was the Civil Rights Act,

the Voting Rights Act.

We were winning on buses

and at lunch counters.

[♪♪♪]

We were seemingly, to me,

at a tipping point

where we were either

gonna roll forward

with this incredible momentum

on racial justice

or we could roll back.

And then April 4th happened.

[GUNSHOT]

And King got shot in the neck.

And it felt like

the whole thing

just rolled back.

Because then came Richard Nixon

and the War on Drugs.

We're 50 years later now.

And once again,

young activists in America

are making Americans

take a look in the mirror,

in terms of our true history

of race and racial prejudice.

Once again, the young activists

are calling us to account.

Once again, America is having

to look at issues of race

dead in the eye, and once again,

we are at a tipping point.

And the question

for all of us in this room is:

"What are we gonna do about it?"

We are our own worst enemies

when it comes to making

true racial progress in America.

And unless we are willing

to take a long and hard look

in the mirror,

this concept of taking two steps

forward and three steps backward

is where we are going to

continue moving in this country.

[♪♪♪]

In 2011,

my wife and I became parents.

My sister-in-law who lived here

in Queens passed away,

and we became the parents

of her then-13-year-old son.

And if you ask Matthew

Liam Brooks, "What are you?"

He will tell you,

"I'm Puerto Rican,

Taíno Indian

and African American."

And he's very proud of that.

And when I look at him, I say,

"I understand, dude.

But you're a young Black male.

'Cause that's

what America is gonna see."

And all of a sudden,

the surface skimming

that I felt like

I had been doing about--

On the history of race and

what racism meant in America,

it wasn't enough,

and so I started reading more.

And I found myself

getting angry

and feeling ignorant.

I went to Marquette University

and I graduated

from Harvard Law School.

I've had one of

the best educations in America,

and I started learning stuff

about the history of race

in this country

that I had never heard before.

And I thought, "How could

I not have known this?

How could I not have been

taught this?"

And I started thinking,

"If I don't know this,

I wonder how many other people

don't know."

[CAR HORN HONKING]

[PEOPLE CHEER]

SPIVEY:

Slavery had nothing to do

with the war.

That was not the cause

of the Southern states seceding.

That was not the cause

of the first shot being fired

on that fort over there.

It was about money.

And it was not about slavery.

It was about Morrill Tariffs.

It was about more money.

Lincoln wanted to impose

45 percent more taxes

on the Southern states.

Taxes on the goods the Southern

states were producing.

And those goods were,

essentially,

cotton, tobacco and rice.

Predominantly.

And those goods...

were produced by slave labor.

All of it.

Isn't that right?

No. Well, I mean...

Ninety-five percent of it?

Isn't that right?

If it's 95 percent produced

by slave labor,

enslaved people...

and the North is saying,

"We're gonna tax you on that

because we want

some of that money,"

and the South is saying,

"No, wait a minute.

We're the ones producing, so you

shouldn't be taking the money,"

that money wouldn't exist

without slave labor.

That did affect the bottom line,

wouldn't you agree with that?

They chose to stay.

In most cases, in the South,

that's the way it worked,

because they were treated

as family.

And they knew what they had.

They didn't know what they were

being faced with if they left.

So your view is that enslaved

people were treated as family?

Then why wouldn't it be

all right for me to own you,

as long as I treated you

like family?

If that's the way

economics work.

Would you be satisfied

with that?

In today's world?

In any world.

In today's time?

At any time.

No.

So was slavery evil?

Yes.

I'm not denying that.

And this flag has

nothing to do with that?

No.

This was

a soldier's battle flag.

I think I need to--

I'm a little sick today,

and so I'm just standing

in the heat.

Uh, thank you for talking to me.

I will say that.

I-- I appreciate that.

Thank you very much

for talking to me.

Yes, sir.

[♪♪♪]

I needed to walk away. Uh...

I am definitely interested

in engaging

with people that don't agree.

But it seemed like facts...

were not that important

to this gentleman.

He knew that what he was saying

made no sense whatsoever,

but he believes it so deeply...

that he's unwilling

to let go of it.

So I don't know

if he can be reached.

But I know that if no one tries,

he definitely won't change.

[♪♪♪]

People aren't just good or bad.

People are many things.

Every person in this theater

knows that's true,

'cause every one of us has been

a saint or a sinner

at some times in our life.

And you know what?

Countries aren't

just one thing either.

They're many things.

America has demonstrated

its greatness

time and time and time again.

And America is one

of the most racist countries

on the face of the Earth.

Those two things

are not mutually exclusive.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]

It is not an either-or.

And the reason I'm asking us

to think about this

is that, literally,

the future is at stake.

Can I see a show of hands?

How many people can see

a triangle

in the form on the board?

Just throw your hands up.

How about a circle?

How about a star?

The Star of David?

You realize none of those shapes

are on this screen?

Not one of them.

[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]

Not one of them.

But what your brain does

is to fill in the gaps,

so that the world makes sense.

And we look at these shapes

and we say,

"I kind of recognize them."

And so we fill in the gaps

so the world makes sense.

And that

doesn't have any problem

when you're doing

something like this.

But the thing is

that we can fill in the gaps

on all sorts of things,

including our judgments

about people.

And sometimes, what we're

filling in the gaps with

comes from a really ugly place.

This is the only time tonight

I'm going to ask you to do this.

I want you to work with me,

and I'm gonna ask you to,

loudly and quickly,

say the color, not the word.

Are we ready?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

Ready? Go.

AUDIENCE:

Red, yellow, blue, green, brown.

Blue, brown, red, yellow, green.

Faster.

Red, yellow, blue, green, brown.

Blue, brown, red, yellow, green.

Blue, br--

[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]

[LAUGHS]

[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

This thing is 80 years old.

And what it does

is to simply demonstrate

that you are making connections

between the word and the color

below your conscious level.

You don't even know

that you're doing it.

And when that connection

is broken,

it actually takes

just a little bit more time

to get to the right answer.

That is the heart of the science

about unconscious bias.

Whether it's unconscious bias

or deliberate bias...

the person experiencing it

experiences exactly

the same thing.

If you don't get the job because

a racist doesn't hire you,

or because somebody

has unconscious bias,

you still don't have a job.

If you get arrested

because somebody had bias

to call the police

because someone Black

is existing in space

and they're nervous,

whether it's unconscious

or deliberate,

you still have to deal

with a law enforcement officer.

The difference is meaningless

when it is talking about

the experience of the person

who is victimized by it.

[♪♪♪]

I'm moving from D.C.,

I'm sweating right now.

I'm in my apartment.

But, you know...

somebody called the cops on me

in my own building.

About-- How many of y'all?

About six of y'all showed up.

NEWSCASTER:

New at 5:00, a rude welcome

to the neighborhood

for a man

on the Upper West Side.

He was moving

into his apartment building

when a half-dozen NYPD officers

suddenly showed up.

Darren Martin streamed the

encounter live on Instagram.

He says one of his neighbors

called the police

thinking that he was actually

breaking into the apartment.

Even claiming

that he had a weapon.

So this is 106th Street

in Manhattan?

Yep.

And on the night in question,

uh, looking at where this car

is parked right here,

is this where your U-Haul was?

Our U-Haul was parked

right outside.

Right over here

where this car is.

Right in front of the building.

And then, it looks like 56 is--

Right over here, yeah.

So this is the apartment

that I was moving into.

Yeah, this is it.

And it's outside.

It's a regular building. Looks

like any other walk-up here.

I don't know what those cops'

intentions were when they came.

They were looking for someone

with a weapon.

I could've been killed.

Can I go see my guy?

Can I go upstairs?

OFFICER: Not right now.

Why can't I go anywhere?

OFFICER:

We have to check it out.

What's the problem?

I live here.

We gotta do our investigation.

What are you investigating?

Listen, they called, right?

We're doing our job. That's it.

Who called?

If you're doing nothing wrong--

DARREN: Who called?

Someone called us.

Well, I'm glad

that this is nothing more

than a cramped space

in a hallway

in an apartment building

on 106th Street in New York,

and not another landmark

where another person

from our community

is killed by the police

and we're asking why.

The biases and prejudices

about race in America

are so deep in our DNA

that sometimes we don't even

recognize that they're there.

Take

the Implicit Association Test,

if you haven't taken it.

It's up on the Harvard website,

and it tests your implicit

or unconscious association

on all kinds of things. On race,

on gender, all kinds of things.

And I was interested,

as I was looking at all

of this information,

so I went and took it,

and, uh, it made a mistake.

So I had to take it again.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

Uh, because, see,

it gave these results,

and it's like, "That ain't me."

So I took it again.

And it had the same results.

A negative impression

of Black males.

A negative impression of myself.

And I thought,

"Where did that come from?"

CRUTCHER:

♪ I've had some good days ♪

♪ I've had... ♪

OFFICER 1:

All right, Betty Jo,

where you at?

CRUTCHER:

♪ Some hills to climb ♪

♪ I've had some weary days ♪

♪ And some

Sleepless nights... ♪

OFFICER 2:

Well, he's got his hands up

there for her now.

OFFICER 1:

This guy's still walking.

He isn't following commands.

OFFICER 2:

Time for a Taser, I think.

That looks like a bad dude too.

May be on something.

OFFICER 1:

He may have just been Tasered.

BETTY JO:

Shots fired!

OFFICER 3:

Unit 321,

we have shots fired.

We have one suspect down.

CRUTCHER:

♪ Won't complain ♪

♪ Sometimes clouds hang low ♪

[CHATTER OVER POLICE RADIO]

♪ I can hardly see the road ♪

♪ I've asked a question, Lord

Why? ♪

ROBINSON:

Has your brother been

misportrayed,

in terms of who he was?

Yes, he has. The narrative...

uh, started out as Terence

being a suspect.

Well, he was a student,

not a suspect.

Just left school

15 minutes earlier.

Fifteen minutes later,

he was dead.

In the media, he was a thug.

He was a criminal.

He was a drug addict.

He was a bad dude.

Yes.

Nobody ever humanized

my brother.

And I had to let America know

who that bad dude was.

That was my twin.

[♪♪♪]

He was a father.

He was a son.

He was a brother,

an uncle, a cousin.

He was a friend.

He had a family who loved him.

And my brother did not

deserve to die,

unarmed,

with his hands in the air.

Nobody deserves to die

and take

their last breath alone.

He took his last breath alone.

He laid in the street

like an animal.

ROBINSON:

George Orwell did not write

about a year.

He wrote about

a mindset of oppression.

And there are two things

that he said

that I would strive for each

of us to please remember

as we go forward.

The first,

"Who controls the past,

controls the future."

And, "Who controls the present,

controls the past."

A government that is in power

has the ability

to shape the views

of the population it governs

by putting out a narrative

that sometimes has nothing

to do with the truth.

TRUMP [RECORDED]:

INTERVIEWER:

Yeah. It was--

There are several things

that are problematic there.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

The first is that Andrew Jackson

died almost 16 years

before the Civil War.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

The second is that

if he had said,

"There's no reason for this,"

it wouldn't have been

because he was saying,

"There's no reason

to have slavery,"

because Andrew Jackson had no

problem with enslaving people.

He was a slaver.

And Andrew Jackson will

tell you

what he thinks

about slavery himself.

Andrew Jackson posted this ad

offering a reward

for the capture

of an enslaved person

who had escaped from him.

And the ad describes

the enslaved man,

what he was wearing,

where he might run,

promises to pay all expenses

involved in capturing him

in addition to the $50 reward,

and $10 extra

for every hundred lashes

any person will give him,

to the amount of 300.

That's who Andrew Jackson was.

And that is who is on the face

of our $20 bills.

Countries aren't

just one thing.

[♪♪♪]

CLARKE:

They would sell enslaved people

out of this location

six days a week.

Everyone from newborns

to 70-year-olds

were sold out of here.

For enslaved people

to make the most money

for the traders

and for the sellers,

they have to be prepped first.

Prep could be everything from

high-fat and high-protein diets

to get them

into better physical shape,

as well as, you know,

fresh clothing.

You have this sort of prepping

of the skin through oiling.

If they're looking

a little bit older,

they could either dye the hair

or pluck any grays

that someone would have,

things of that nature,

in order to,

when they come up

onto the block,

they're able to garner

the largest amount of money.

ROBINSON:

And I'm looking at, here,

a "List of Negroes."

And it says, number one,

the name is Sunday,

the age is 45.

CLARKE:

Enslaved people,

they didn't have last names,

generally,

until the 1870 Census.

And so it was the question of,

"What is your name?"

Because the names

could be changed

each time you were sold?

They would be changed.

That's the first thing that is

changed every time you're sold.

So on all broadsides

you will ever see,

this is just the name

they come to the sale with.

And keep in mind

that the enslaved property

of slave owners was worth more

than everything else they owned.

It was worth more

than the plantation.

It was worth more

than the land.

More than the goods that are

produced on that plantation.

More than the house. More than

any other liveries they have.

So the first thing

that's going to be sold

to pay for a debt

is your enslaved.

Because you didn't have to

buy them outright.

You could mortgage them.

When it came

to movement of enslaved,

prior to being brought

onto that block,

they're going to be chained.

Mm-hm.

Now, everyone's

going to be chained.

It's not just

going to be grown-ups.

It's not going to be

the elderly.

It'll also be the children.

ROBINSON:

And so I think

what I'm looking at are shackles

that were designed

for an adult male,

and shackles that were designed

for a child of maybe 3 or 4.

CLARKE:

Yes. Yes.

Ista...

what are...

the three holes that I see in

these bricks in the walls there?

They're fingerprints.

Um, enslaved people would

begin to learn a skill

at the age of about 6.

Mm-hm.

And so fingerprints

and handprints and thumbprints

exist all throughout the city,

because enslaved people built

the city.

And so on churches,

on businesses, on--

In alleyways, you see these.

In theaters, you see these

all throughout the city

in very, very subtle ways.

And if you don't know

what you're looking for,

you may not see them.

ROBINSON: But they're there.

CLARKE:

Absolutely, and they are a way

of the enslaved

who created this city

and created the economy

that created this country

to remind us,

"Hey, I was here too."

[CHURCH BELL TOLLING]

ROBINSON:

And so if I make

the statement to you:

"America was founded

on white supremacy."

You could say, "Jeff,

that's an extreme statement."

And what I would say to you is,

"Don't believe a word

I say about it.

Just listen

to what Americans said."

Because they were willing

to tell you

exactly what they thought.

All you have to do is go look.

We know that in 1619,

20-and-odd enslaved people

were brought to America,

landed in Jamestown.

And by 1636,

less than 20 years later,

we launched the first

American-made slave ship,

the Desire.

And it wasn't built

in Alabama or Mississippi.

It was built in Massachusetts.

And look at the name

of the ship. The Desire.

And the names

of the three subsequent ships

built in America to go to Africa

to get enslaved people.

The Fortune, the Hope

and the Prosperity.

They are telling you with

language that is crystal clear

what they think about

the concept of white supremacy.

In 1662, Virginia passed a law

that said,

"Children of enslaved mothers

are also enslaved."

Very simple law.

Why did they need it?

Because it was clear

that white slave masters

were raping Black women

on a normal and regular basis,

and these rapes

were producing children.

And the law just wanted to say,

"We don't want there

to be any mistake.

If those babies come out

with blue eyes or freckles,

those aren't people,

those are enslaved people."

The law made sure to know that.

Virginia then passed a law

saying,

"If slaves become Christians,

that doesn't mean

that they're freed."

Because you become a Christian

if you are enslaved

only by the charity

and piety of your owner.

This is the language

that Americans were using

to describe

the institution of slavery.

They equated it

with charity and piety.

1669, Virginia passed a law,

"An enslaved person's death

while resisting a master

is not a felony."

Would you look

at those words, please?

And think about the videos you

have seen in the past ten years

of Black and brown people

ending up dead

in altercations

with police officers

when they are unarmed?

It's still not a felony.

[♪♪♪]

In 1739,

there was a slave revolt

in Stono, South Carolina,

that was incredibly violent.

There were some white people

that were actually beheaded.

And the state of South Carolina

responded,

and they responded quickly.

By 1740, they had passed

a 58-chapter law,

and the purpose of that law,

in their words, not mine,

"So that the slave may be kept

in due subjugation

and obedience."

This wasn't just social racism

or individual racism.

This was the law

inscribing this.

Can you talk just a little bit

about where you're taking us?

I'm taking you on Ashley Avenue

between Fishburne

and Line Streets.

Now, the neighborhood

didn't look like it looks today.

It was a lot of farmland

and some wooded area.

MILLER:

Some people just refer to it

as the Ashley Avenue Oak.

Lynchings or hangings took

place here on this very spot.

This happened from slavery,

it happened

all the way up

until the early 1900s.

So there were lynchings here

even after the Civil War ended?

Absolutely.

MILLER:

Well, everybody needs to know

what happened here

so that we would all

be able to learn from it.

Because it's a part

of our history.

American history.

ROBINSON:

The word "slavery" appears

once in the Constitution.

That's in the 13th Amendment,

outlawing slavery.

And if you go back

to the historical documents,

what you'll see is that the

Southern states would get upset

when the word "slavery"

was used. And for God's sakes,

we don't wanna make

white people uncomfortable.

So the Northerners said,

"Don't worry,

we won't use the word 'slavery'

when we go to the Constitution.

We'll call them things like

'such persons.'"

The Three-fifths Clause

in Article I, Section 2

of the Constitution.

All those Black folks

in Virginia, 236,000?

Well, they will be counted

as three-fifths of a person.

Each one of them.

Article I, Section 9,

no ban on migration

or importations of such persons

until 1808.

What are they saying?

"We have built

all of these ships

to go get enslaved people,

and we need at least about

20 years to keep doing it."

So the Constitution says,

"You can keep doing it

for the next 20 years."

Article II, Section 1.

"Each state shall appoint

a number of electors

equal to the number of

senators and representatives."

What we are talking about,

folks,

is the Electoral College.

The Electoral College

was based on the fact

that the Southern states

were concerned

about the power

that they would have

to prevent the government

from taking

the enslaved people from them.

And this was

one of the compromises.

That Three-fifths Clause?

Three-fifths of 236,000

adds a lot of delegates.

Article IV, Section 2,

no freedom for a runaway,

because slaves have to be

returned to owners on demand.

And people have said

that the folks

who wrote our Constitution

were brilliant.

And I agree with that.

They were brilliant

and they were sneaky too.

Because they said,

"You know, somebody may try

and amend the Constitution

and get rid

of Article I, Section 9.

So in Article V, they said:

"You can't amend Article I,

Section 9, until 1808."

This is how important

the concept of white supremacy

was to the people

that founded the country.

When they were talking about

life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness,

they saw that

as being completely consistent

with enslaving people.

The law picked a side.

If you read the historians,

they will tell you

that modern-day

police departments

were originally formed,

especially in the South,

in slave patrols.

I am not saying

that modern-day police officers

are members of a slave patrol.

They are not.

There are law enforcement

officers all over America

who are fighting

for racial justice

and Constitutional and decent

policing in our communities.

But I will tell you this:

People in my community,

from my great-great-great

grandfathers on down,

have had a reason

to fear that badge.

Because the people wearing it,

and the weapons and guns

that they carried,

were used to oppress us.

So the next time

you're wondering,

"Why is there such animosity

in the Black community

when it comes to policing?

Why is there such concern?"

It's in our DNA.

[♪♪♪]

CARR:

I always used to tell Eric,

you know,

"Don't have any interactions

with the police officers.

Because the police officers,

they have the upper hand.

You have to remember,

they're the ones with the guns.

They're the ones

that could arrest you,

and no matter what you say."

So he would say,

"Oh, yeah, I know, Ma."

And, um, even with all the talk,

we can talk to our children

as much as we want,

it's not always gonna be

a good turnout

when things like this happen.

Mm, right.

That's Eric. Eric is,

I think, five months old

in that picture, if that old.

He was my first-born.

Eric was a gentle giant.

He was a person

who cared about other people

and who thought

everyone was his friend.

Are you serious?

I didn't do nothin'.

What'd I do?

ROBINSON:

If you can share it...

what was going through your mind

as you heard your son saying,

"I can't breathe"?

Until now, I cannot look

at that video in its entirety,

because when I seen it

for the first time,

I remember me going through

this house banging on walls,

yelling at the police officers,

"Let him go! Let him go!"

Now I could see exactly

what they did to him.

Do not touch me.

CARR:

When this tragedy

happened to me,

I just wanted

to take to my bed,

and just go to sleep,

and just wake up when this

terrible nightmare was over.

But it was never over.

And the Holy Spirit spoke

to me one evening and says,

"Are you gonna lay there

and die like your son?

Or are you gonna get up,

lift up his name,

and let people know

exactly who he was

and not let

the media demonize him?"

My son will not have

died in vain.

We are gonna support him

every step of the way.

Me and my grandchildren,

my nieces, nephews, sisters,

everybody is going

to support this cause,

'cause we won't rest

until we get justice.

Even though it's too late

for my son,

we have to save other lives.

How would you like your son

to be remembered?

Well, I would like my son

to be remembered as

the sacrificial lamb, that

everyone knows his name now.

And I am so glad that

it is making a difference,

that people are more aware

of the cruelty

and the injustice that's

going on with people of color,

and maybe they will stand up

and take notice, and say,

"Well, hey, we have

to do something about this."

CROWD [CHANTING]:

I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

CARR:

This is real.

We see what's actually going on

in this world today.

And I'm just hoping

that his name

will live on in history forever.

And as long as I live,

I will always say his name,

and I will ask everyone else

to please say his name

and tell people

what does it mean to them.

His name was Eric Garner.

Yes.

Eric Garner was his name.

Is his name.

NATIONAL ANTHEM SINGERS:

♪ A home and country ♪

♪ Should leave us no more ♪

♪ Their blood has washed out ♪

♪ Their foul footsteps'

Pollution ♪

♪ No refuge could save ♪

♪ The hireling and slave ♪

♪ From the terror of flight ♪

♪ Or the gloom of the grave ♪

♪ And the star-spangled banner ♪

♪ In triumph doth wave... ♪

In case you doubt

the lyrics to the third verse

of the national anthem

that you just heard,

these are the handwritten lyrics

from Francis Scott Key.

"No refuge could save

the hireling and slave

from the terror of flight

or the gloom of the grave."

He is celebrating

the murder of enslaved people.

And why would he do that?

He was the wealthy owner

of enslaved people.

He came from a Maryland

plantation-owning family.

In United States

v. Reuben Crandall,

he prosecuted a man

for possessing

abolitionist literature.

He was the city prosecutor

in Washington, D.C.,

and he sought the death penalty.

And here is

his closing argument:

"Are you willing, gentlemen,

to abandon your country,

to permit it to be

taken from you

and occupied

by the abolitionist,

according to whose taste it is

to associate and amalgamate

with the Negro?"

I guess he wrote a nice poem,

but that's

who Francis Scott Key is.

By 1835, cotton

from enslaved people's labor,

55 percent of U.S. exports.

So when we see America starting

to become industrialized,

we see that cotton from

the labor of enslaved people

was a critical part of this.

Twelve U.S. presidents

owned enslaved people.

This covered about

50 of America's first 60 years,

and that's why

I am saying to you,

the people

that founded this country

had no problem

with white supremacy.

They depended on it

to make America a great nation.

ROBINSON:

So when did slavery end

in New York?

TOUSSAINT:

Slavery in New York ended

in 1827,

but to really understand

New York's rise,

in terms of becoming

a financial powerhouse,

it's important to understand

the connection between New York

and enslavement,

even after slavery

was abolished in New York City.

The building behind us

is the Cotton Exchange,

established in the 1850s,

one of the greatest commodities

exchanges in the country.

New York was

a center for finance,

is still the center for finance,

and this is

where slaveholders would come

to get all their endeavors

financed and insured.

We found out recently

that major insurers

like AIG and Aetna

insured enslaved people

as goods.

Enslaved people who died

en route

during the Middle Passage,

enslaved people who died

on the plantation,

all those people,

with their lives, were insured.

So they had

life insurance policies.

Also, major investment banks,

like the now-defunct

Lehman Brothers,

provided financing

for slaveholders.

So the economy of New York

was entwined with slavery.

We're walking up

just from the waterfront,

right back here,

about a block away,

and as we're coming

to the corner

of, uh, Water and Wall Streets,

there is this little park.

I have an idea in my mind

when you say "slave market."

But can you just tell us,

explicitly,

what was happening on this site?

So there was

a municipal market, a pavilion,

that operated

from 1711 until 1762.

By the mid-1700s, one in five

New Yorkers were enslaved.

So they created

this municipal market,

where once you were kidnapped

and brought here,

you would be sold

at this pavilion.

In addition, if you were

already enslaved in New York

and your slaveholder

didn't have something

for you to do during the day,

you could be rented out

for the day at this market.

Like any other transaction

that might occur in the city

where the city would impose

a tax to get revenue,

the slave trade was just

another thing to be taxed?

Exactly.

And that's why New York City

was such a pro-slavery city.

When we say that to people,

they're shocked.

New York was pro-slavery.

New York received,

from cotton alone,

$200 million

in that time's currency.

So if you could imagine

the interests that would

wanna protect that.

ROBINSON:

How many of you knew that

the mayor of New York City

advocated that New York leave

the Union during the Civil War?

He didn't say,

"Join the Confederacy."

What he said was:

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

He was saying,

"We can't give this up.

If we withdraw from the Union,

we don't have to join the South.

We can make business deals

with the North

and business deals

with the South.

The money will keep coming in."

So, what was the role of slavery

in America

on the eve of the Civil War?

Well, that yearly

cotton production,

1.5 million pounds in 1790,

try 2.3 billion pounds,

60 percent

of U.S. exports by 1860.

If any of you have ever held

a ball of freshly picked cotton

in your hand,

with no stems

or no sticks on it,

you will know that

it weighs virtually nothing.

How much of that

do you think you had to pick

to get to 2.3 billion pounds

of it?

And how did they do that?

Because the number

of enslaved people

wasn't 700,000 anymore.

It was 4 million.

And remember,

we're not bringing over people

on slave ships after 1808.

Now, history will show

there were definitely ships

of enslaved people

brought after 1808,

but that market dried up

very quickly.

This was done by breeding.

Black women were bred...

so that they would bear children

who could continue

American cotton production.

[♪♪♪]

The value of enslaved people,

in 1860 dollars,

$3.5 billion dollars.

One hundred billion dollars

in today's money.

More millionaires per capita

in the Mississippi Valley,

that's Tennessee,

Mississippi and Louisiana,

than any place else in America.

Today, that is one of the

poorest sections in the country.

There are all kinds of people

who are desperate

to make arguments

that the Civil War was about

something other than slavery.

In the state of Texas,

elected officials

are trying to pass laws

that will require

their schoolteachers

to teach that slavery was

a side issue in the Civil War.

And my response to that is,

once again, don't believe me.

Just go back and look

at what the states said.

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

Georgia was essentially saying,

"You freaking lied to us.

You told us that we could keep

these people as enslaved people,

and now you're taking them

away from us,

and we're leaving the Union

because of it."

And you know what?

Georgia was right.

They were promised

that they would get to keep

people as enslaved people.

I'm from the state of Tennessee,

and if I wanna go

to my home state

and walk into

the Tennessee statehouse

to see

one of my state legislators,

I gotta walk past this guy,

Nathan Bedford Forrest,

who was either

the originator of the KKK

or one of its first

Grand Wizards,

somebody that was

clearly involved

with the KKK

coming to a height of power,

somebody that was

a Confederate soldier,

and what he had to say about

the Civil War,

at least he was honest.

"If we ain't

fighting for slavery,

then what the hell

are we fighting for?"

Ignorance is not bliss,

because it allows

a false history to thrive.

"Who controls the past,

controls the future."

And if slavery just ended,

and then we had

the Civil Rights Movement,

and everything was fine,

then what are we still

complaining about?

"Who controls the past,

controls the future."

And your children,

they are being taught

that slavery was a side issue

in the Civil War.

[♪♪♪]

Six months before

the Emancipation Proclamation,

Abraham Lincoln passed the

Compensated Emancipation Act.

What did that do?

He freed D.C. slaves,

and first,

he set up a commission

to pay approximately $300,

which was about $7000

in today's money,

in compensation

to former slave owners

for each enslaved African freed.

Please read that carefully.

I'm not fooling.

After nine months,

900 slave owners

were paid $1 million,

in 1860 money...

for lost property.

So when people have a discussion

about reparations for slavery,

it's a false debate,

because reparations

have already been paid.

They were paid to slave owners.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]

At the very same time

that America refused

to give the Negro any land...

through an act of Congress,

our government was giving away

millions of acres of land

in the West and the Midwest.

Which meant that

it was willing to undergird

its white peasants from

Europe with an economic floor.

But not only

did they give the land...

they built land grant colleges

with government money

to teach them how to farm.

Not only that,

they provided county agents

to further their expertise

in farming.

Not only that, they provided

low interest rates

in order that they could

mechanize their farms.

Not only that,

today many of these people

are receiving

millions of dollars

in federal subsidies

not to farm,

and they are the very people

telling the Black man

that he ought to lift himself

by his own bootstraps.

And this is what

we are faced with,

and this is the reality.

Now, when we come

to Washington...

in this campaign,

we are coming to get our check.

[♪♪♪]

ROBINSON:

So, what happened

after the war?

Something was happening

in the South,

because the enslaved people

who were newly freed

had been in the starting blocks

for 246 years.

And when the word "go" came,

they were ready.

'Cause what many people fail

to recognize

is Reconstruction

was actually working.

In 1868, before

the 15th Amendment passed,

there were 700,000 Black

registered voters in the South.

Two thousand Black men

served in elected office.

There was a Civil Rights Act

in 1875.

I bet most of the lawyers in

this room don't even know this.

It outlawed

racial discrimination

in housing, schools, public

transportation and jury service.

It was just overruled

by the Supreme Court in 1883.

And then Rutherford Hayes

got elected president.

And in 1877, he withdrew the

Northern troops from the South,

and what happened then is that

the Confederates regrouped

as organizations like the KKK.

The Southern states

started passing laws

to enforce and maintain

white supremacy,

and if you want an example

of what was happening,

in 1896 in Louisiana,

there were 130,344

Black registered voters,

and two years later,

there were just over 5000.

Why do you think 125,000 people

decided not to vote?

There was a chance

at the end of the Civil War,

and there was Reconstruction,

and it was working.

And they reached

the tipping point,

and they just rolled right back.

And this is

what we rolled back to.

In 1896,

the United States Supreme Court

decided Plessy v. Ferguson.

Mr. Plessy got on a train,

on purpose,

knowing he would be arrested,

to test the law in America.

And the United States

Supreme Court said,

"The law of America

is separate but equal."

It's not the custom,

it's the law of the land.

Now, I'm gonna ask you

to look at that image

and understand what was normal,

accepted and American...

in our country.

Because you wanna talk

about race in America

at the turn of the 20th century,

well, there were race riots in

New Orleans and New York City.

In 1901,

105 Black people are lynched.

1902, 85 Black people

are lynched.

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

Between 1877 and 1950,

more than 4000 racial,

terrorized lynchings in America.

This article appeared in

the Chicago Defender,

December 20, 1947.

It says,

"Enraged, jealous whites

shoot down

successful businessman.

Believed Dixie gang

murdered young father.

Enraged whites, jealous over

the business success of a Negro,

are believed to be the lynchers

of Elmore Bolling,

who was found last week

riddled with shotgun

and pistol bullets.

Those who know say Bolling

has long been a marked man

since he was rated

by whites here

as too successful

to be a Negro."

Your family found

your father's body in a ditch.

Is this the ditch that

we're looking at now?

Yes, this is actually the spot,

and it's ingrained in my memory

where I'm just looking at him

in the ditch with his eyes open.

We heard the shots.

We thought that someone

was killing some cows,

but we actually heard the shots

that killed my dad.

We all went down there,

not knowing what to expect.

His truck that he was driving

was still running,

with the lights on.

He had been shot

six times with a pistol

and once in the back

with a shotgun.

I knew that

what had happened to my father

was extremely bad.

I cried most of the time

until my mom finally sent me

away with the neighbor.

This is a fabulous picture.

Could you tell us who is here?

This is Mom, Bertha Bolling.

Bertha Nowden Bolling.

Um, and this is my dad,

Elmore Bolling.

And one of the things

that we always laugh about,

the children,

is that this thing in his hand,

actually, is her purse.

She kept the money.

[LAUGHS]

So on this picture,

Dad took her purse

and had it under his arm,

because that was the money.

What was the trajectory

of your family

after your father was lynched?

By my father being

the main breadwinner,

we went from prosperity

to poverty almost overnight.

And my mom, she became

a presser in a dry cleaners.

And her arms had

the burns that showed--

You know, that came along

with that kind of labor.

And that was the labor

that put me through college.

The lynchings occurred

for terroristic purposes.

They wanted

to keep Blacks terrified,

to keep them from trying

to do things, and it worked.

Was anyone ever prosecuted?

No.

The killers who,

actually, one of them

actually admitted

that he killed my father

because he insulted his wife

over the telephone,

were never indicted.

[♪♪♪]

And that was

what made me decide

to do the historic marker.

I had to have some symbol

to tell the world

that here was a good man

that was killed

just because he was successful.

And am I correct

that it is on, literally,

the very spot

where your father was killed?

Within feet of where

he was actually killed.

And Confederate monuments

started appearing in America.

And these weren't monuments

that were built

right after the Civil War,

when people were thinking,

"Oh, my God,

we just lost this war,

and our heroes

are so dear to our heart,

we wanna memorialize them."

No, no. They came

mostly in the 20th century.

This is a guy named John Pelham.

What did he do?

Well, he resigned

from West Point in 1861

to join the Confederate Army,

and here's what he did

to get a monument.

"He displayed a genius

for dashing to a spot

that commanded the battlefield

and bravely raining shot

and canisters

on forces that greatly

outnumbered his own."

Translated, he killed a whole

bunch of American soldiers

in defense of slavery.

And they built

a monument to him for that,

not for something else.

When people say, "Well, George

Washington owned slaves too,

and he has a monument. Are you

gonna take away his monument?"

And my response is

the Washington Monument

was not built

because George Washington

owned slaves.

He did own slaves,

and he will be damned for that.

Having said that,

George Washington

led the Revolutionary Army,

and, I don't know,

he founded the country?

So maybe that's why

they built him a monument.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

The fact that he owned

enslaved people

had nothing to do

with his monument.

The Confederate monuments

were built for one reason,

to honor people for what

they did from 1861 to 1865.

And those monuments honor people

during that time period

for doing one thing,

maiming and murdering

American soldiers

so that they could keep

owning enslaved people.

That's where the monuments are.

Those are the top ten states.

And this is

who we are in America.

What's up, y'all?

Tami Sawyer here.

I'm live at the

Nathan Bedford Forrest statue.

Right here

in Memphis, Tennessee.

I just wanted to come down

and let

Nathan Bedford Forrest know,

uh, that he has

a formidable opponent.

I was asked,

"What's one thing

you think you could

make happen in a year?"

I said, "We can get

these damn statues removed."

And I didn't believe it,

but I said,

"That sounds like one thing

we could do."

And, um, I went on Facebook,

and I made a post that said,

"Who wants to talk about

these statues?" And next thing,

we had filled

Bruce Elementary gym

with 350 Memphians of all ages,

races, genders,

sexualities, creeds,

even a descendant of Nathan

Bedford Forrest himself,

who came together to say,

"We want Nathan Bedford Forrest

and Jefferson Davis

and all Confederate memorabilia

removed from our city."

MAN [OVER MEGAPHONE]:

Take them down.

PROTESTORS [CHANTING]:

901.

Take them down.

901.

PEOPLE [CHANTING]:

Protect the people,

not the statue.

Protect the people,

not the statue.

Protect the people,

not the statue.

ROBINSON:

How do you respond

to the people that say,

"This isn't about slavery

or oppression of Black people.

This is about Southern culture

and Southern history

and maintaining our history"?

I think that those people

need to, one, learn history.

When people talk

about Southerners,

they think about white people.

But the economy of the South

and the culture of the South

was built off slavery.

The food we eat, right?

Fried chicken, ham hocks,

collard greens.

That's Black people.

The music we listen to.

Elvis is not Elvis

without Black musicians, right?

Martin Luther King

was killed here, right?

Blackness,

the blood of Black people,

seeps so deeply

into the ground of the South,

you cannot look at--

You cannot describe Southerners

or Southern history

or American history with

the exclusion of Black people.

And so the people who say

that we're rewriting history,

they rewrote history.

Now, if we had

a statue that says,

"Here lies the graves

of a notorious slave owner

and his wife,

who only became one

of the richest people in Memphis

because of his brutal practices

towards Black Americans."

But that's not the history

that people are ready

to reconcile.

And I see our Black kids, their

lights go out in their eyes

at 3, 4, 5 years old.

They believe they're lesser than

by the time

they've reached kindergarten.

And if we can change anything,

I believe that we could change

the landscape of our city

so they didn't have

to be reminded on a daily basis

that they are considered

second-class citizens

by many people in this country.

History is being made

in Memphis tonight.

Within the next few hours...

both the Nathan Bedford Forrest

and Jefferson Davis statues

will no longer stand

in our city.

[♪♪♪]

SAWYER:

While we watched

the cranes come in,

the park get filled

with workers,

and I was right

across the street to witness,

at 9:01 on December 20th, 2017,

Nathan Bedford Forrest

rise above that pedestal

for the first time

since he was placed.

ROBINSON:

What was that feeling like?

It's a complicated feeling.

One of relief, one of joy,

um, and one of sadness.

Where was the sadness from?

We had to fight so hard, right?

Like, that I had friends

who went to jail for this,

that a woman was killed

for this, right?

And that our statue came down,

and almost another thousand

stand across the country.

And that people are working

harder to protect them

and tell us that we are wrong

or attention-seekers

than they are to reconcile

and get to a point of truth

and understanding about

who these people were.

[RICHARD WAGNER'S

"RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES" PLAYING]

ROBINSON:

February 10, 1915, The Birth

of a Nation is released.

D.W. Griffith's stupendous

motion picture production

of Thomas Dixon's famous story,

The Clansman.

It employed the services

of 18,000 people

and a symphony orchestra of 40.

As you can see, it took

three years in production.

It was one of the first movies

screened in the White House.

And it had white actors

in blackface, like this one.

And this story, by the way...

does damage...

not only

to every Black person...

but it takes the issue

of sexual assault

and twists it in a way

that's incredible.

Because, of course, rather than

let a Black man touch her...

she'll jump to her death.

This is what Woodrow Wilson

had to say about the movie.

"The white men were roused

by a mere instinct

of self-preservation

until at last, there had

sprung into existence

a great Ku Klux Klan,

a veritable empire

of the South,

to protect

the Southern country."

This is the president

of the United States.

Folks, this was entertainment.

This was a pleasant evening

at the movies.

This is who we are as Americans

at the turn of the last century.

[♪♪♪]

Over your shoulder is a bridge

with a man's name on it.

And I have seen

pictures of that bridge

ever since I was

a young, young child,

and I see the name

Edmund Pettus.

I think there are

very few people in America

who know who Edmund Pettus

really was.

Edmund Pettus was

a powerful leader in this area.

He was a former U.S. Senator.

Uh, most importantly,

he was the Grand Dragon

of the Ku Klux Klan.

Highest leader.

When this bridge was completed,

I think, in 1940 or so,

they wanted a symbol.

They wanted

to name, uh, the bridge

after somebody who, uh,

would send a signal

of "stay in your place,"

because symbols

are more powerful than words.

And so this

is a very powerful symbol.

Every time someone cross

the Edmund Pettus Bridge,

it gets in them.

Every time someone see

a photo of it, it gets in them.

Every time one sees something

on TV, it gets in them.

So that's why, in the Senate,

uh, I got--

I introduced a resolution

to change the name

from Edmund Pettus Bridge

to the Freedom Bridge.

And the state of Alabama,

last year, passed a law

that said you cannot change

the names of any of these

so-called iconic

white supremacist symbols.

SANDERS:

And somebody says,

"Well, this is history."

This is symbolism.

This is not history.

We ought never confuse

symbolism with history.

Symbolism is somebody's idea

about a response to what

happened. Not what happened.

MAN [OVER MEGAPHONE]:

You are to move off

of the street immediately

and assemble in front

of Lehman's Pontiac Dealer,

otherwise you will not

be protected.

[CROWD CLAMORING]

[WOMAN SCREAMS]

And here it is,

50-some years later after that,

and we're still fighting

for the right to vote,

we're still fighting to keep

our children from being killed,

we're still fighting

to keep our people

from being incarcerated,

we're still fighting

for all kinds of things.

So that just demonstrates

the depth of white supremacy.

And I didn't fully

understand that.

ROBINSON:

The Greenwood neighborhood

in Tulsa

was called Black Wall Street

by many people.

These are some of the images

of how Black Americans

were living in Tulsa, Oklahoma,

in 1921.

The level of economic

advancement was astounding.

Six hundred businesses,

21 churches,

21 restaurants,

30 grocery stores,

two movie theaters,

six private airplanes,

a hospital, bank,

post office, schools.

Libraries, law offices,

even a bus system.

On May 30th of 1921,

a young Black man was arrested

and accused

of trying to assault

a white female

elevator operator.

All of the historical records

say

that the kid tripped

in the elevator

and bumped into

this white woman.

But he was arrested,

and the rumor mill started,

and a lynch mob formed.

Well, the men in Greenwood

were World War I veterans,

and when they heard

about the lynch mob,

they got their guns and

went down to the courthouse.

Not to break anybody out,

but to keep the lynch mob out.

On June 1st, 1921,

white people rented airplanes.

They got

burning balls of turpentine,

and they dropped them

on the businesses

and homes in Greenwood.

And when Black people ran out

of the burning buildings

and homes,

they were shot dead by

white people standing outside.

I get angry

when I read about this

referred to as "the Tulsa Riot."

This was not a riot.

This was a massacre.

[♪♪♪]

[TRAIN BELL RINGS]

This was the cost

of preventing a lynching.

RANDLE:

I thought the world

was coming to an end.

[CHUCKLES]

I felt, "Well, what in the world

is going on?"

Being as young as I was,

I didn't understand.

But it was quite a mess.

It was quite something.

ROBINSON:

Would you introduce yourself,

please?

Tell folks your name?

My name is Lessie Evelyn Randle.

It was Benningfield

before I married, and, uh...

I am 100 and...years old.

[BOTH LAUGHING]

RANDLE:

I remember, I don't know

what you call them, rebels,

or what they were, came in,

and, um, they just spared

Grandmother's home,

they didn't burn her home.

But the homes all around us

were burned,

and stores were just...

cleaned out and everything,

but it was quite something.

I never wanted to see

anything like that again.

I saw two or three being

shot down as we were escaping.

At one time,

we went in an area

where they had killed so many,

just had them piled up

in the street in a pile.

And I thought that was terrible.

I remember thinking that.

I said, "What are these people

doing lying around like this?"

One of the people told me,

"They're dead.

They were killed."

I said, "Oh, my God."

That, of course, scared me,

being a kid and everything,

but it was quite something.

[BIRDS CAWING]

So this is

a city-owned cemetery?

Yes.

The name of it is...?

Oaklawn Cemetery.

And it was a place

where we have

very credible evidence,

eyewitness testimony

that's been passed down,

that bodies were dumped.

And we've gotten

documented stories

from white citizens

that live in Tulsa

who had families here

during the massacre and before.

'Cause one of the guys

that I interviewed told me,

he said, "My father took me..."

You used to be able to walk up

to the rail system.

He said they brought rail cars

through here, flatbed rail cars,

and they just rolled bodies off.

But our contention was

the bodies were dumped

all the way

where the underpass is,

and they intentionally put

the interstate

on top of their bodies,

knowing that nobody

would ever think...

To look under the road.

...to look under the road.

ROBINSON:

What is the most

reasonable estimate

of how many people died?

You're looking at 4000 people...

Easy.

...that you cannot account for.

Yeah, I agree.

So it's a genocide.

It's an ethnic cleansing,

you know?

Even to call it a massacre

marginalizes it,

you know,

because it's just too big.

ROBINSON: Mm-hm.

It's too big of a story.

AMUSAN:

You see the steps

over to the left?

ROBINSON: Yes.

AMUSAN: We call those

the Steps of No Return.

And why are they called

the Steps of No Return?

WILLIAMS:

'Cause the houses

were never rebuilt.

Mm-hm.

AMUSAN: Yeah, it's a powerful...

WILLIAMS: Mm-hm.

Powerful place to be.

And you look forward,

you look at the city,

and you just imagine what was.

And what could have been.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

If this hadn't been destroyed.

ROBINSON:

This city could've had

an incredibly

different destiny.

AMUSAN: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Definitely.

RANDLE:

I never wanted to see

anything like that again.

Of course, you never know

what may happen again.

You never know.

Because the way it's going now,

from what I've seen...

I feel like

anything could happen.

ROBINSON:

How is it possible that

this could happen in America

and not be taught

in history books

up one side and down the other?

Do you know how many people

were prosecuted

for the Tulsa Massacre?

Zero.

Do you think law enforcement

didn't know

who rented an airplane

on June 1st?

Do you think law enforcement

couldn't tell from the pictures

who were walking around town

with shotguns

over their shoulders

to figure out who may have shot

some of the Black people?

Do you really think

law enforcement

didn't know what happened?

The reason I have shown this

and shown

the pictures of lynchings,

is that these kind of things

could not happen

without law enforcement

acquiescence

or direct involvement.

You can't hang somebody from

a tree in the middle of the city

and have the police

not know about it.

[♪♪♪]

The hand you see

in that picture

is the hand

of Emmett Till's mother.

That woman is one

of the bravest women

in American history,

because she took

her personal tragedy...

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]

...her incredibly

personal tragedy,

and she made a decision.

"I am going to make America

look at who we are."

And in 1955,

this next picture appeared

in newspapers across America.

And I believe, personally,

that many white people

across America woke up

and looked at this picture

in the paper,

and said something

to themselves like this:

"I know those colored people

down there

are causing a problem...

but I didn't sign up for this."

[♪♪♪]

Everyone thinks that America

is still

one of the most segregated

countries in the world

because of social individual

prejudice and finances.

And I'm not saying

that those two things

don't have some relationship

to our segregated country.

What I am saying is federal,

state and local governments

deliberately sabotaged

Black homeownership.

This wasn't a mistake.

This was the deliberate policy

of the federal government.

The Federal Housing Authority

drew redline maps

of every major city in America.

That's the redline map

of Brooklyn, New York.

"A," or green ranking, meant

the neighborhood

was homogeneous.

A "B," or blue ranking,

meant it was still desirable

and expected to remain stable.

A "C" ranking meant

it was declining,

beginning to be integrated,

bordering

on Black neighborhoods.

And a "D" ranking was red,

for redlining,

any Black presence at all.

And this was the truth

from sea to shining sea.

And then we reach 1954,

with Brown v. The Board.

I will tell you, this had

a major impact on my life

in terms

of school desegregation.

This is what Thurgood Marshall

argued in the Supreme Court.

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

And doesn't that make sense?

What the heck is

"separate but equal" except:

"You are not human enough.

Don't drink my water

out of my water fountain,

don't use the bathroom

and my toilet,

don't go to school

with my children."

ROBINSON:

Let's stroll

and see if we can find

our eighth grade

graduation picture

and second grade

First Communion picture.

RICHARD:

Uh, it used to be down here.

I think the lights may

come on as we walk.

Mmm...

No.

Yeah, there we go.

There it is.

Ah, here we go.

RICHARD: Yeah, but this--

1963.

There's First Communion.

That's First Communion.

That's me.

That's Opie right there.

ROBERT: That's right.

ROBINSON:

That's my older brother,

Herbert.

RICHARD:

Yep.

My older brother, Herbert, and I

were the first two Black kids

to come to school at St. Louis.

Opie, you and I met each other

the summer before

the second grade,

and that was the start of

one of the best friendships

I've ever had in my life.

Well, as we were going

to school here

and different things

were happening in the world,

I remember when King

was assassinated, for example.

Uh, Op, what do you remember

about that?

I remembered that, uh,

I think it was the first time

I saw my father

be armed with a shotgun

in our house

just because of the fear

of-- Just of civil unrest.

Mm-hm.

Uh...

But, you know, we were

still so young at that time

that we didn't have a true sense

of what was really going on.

Yeah.

Uh, we were just having fun.

Yeah.

And we would go places,

um, and the only thing

that really...

I think the first time

that I felt any discomfort is,

and you might recall this,

uh, we took the bus

to the Crosstown Theater.

Mm-hm.

And the movie Patton

had just come out,

with George C. Scott.

And at the Crosstown...

we went and we had to sit

in the balcony

because Jeffery wasn't allowed

to sit in the main area.

Uh, I didn't think much of it

because I wanted to sit

in the balcony to start with.

[ALL LAUGH]

It's pretty neat up there.

But it was the first time

that I realized

that there were differences

on how we were treated

by others.

And I remember it was something

that we kind of brushed off

in our childhood, but looking

back on it, it's, uh...

It's just sad.

One thing I remember

more than anything else

about those days,

where y'all were concerned,

and hopefully you don't even

hardly remember this,

because I tried

to take care of it

in a very professional manner.

Um, we went to Sacred Heart

in Walls, to a basketball game,

and we were all

getting out of the car,

and we were walking

into the gym.

And a man grabbed me by the arm

and said, "What are you doing?"

And I said, "Pardon me?"

And he said,

"We don't allow Blacks in

the gym, or to play in the gym."

So this is Mississippi,

which is right over the line.

And I said,

"Well, that's fine."

Uh, and I remember turning

to y'all, and I said,

"They've got a problem

with the clock,

and with what's going on here,

we all are out here.

We're leaving."

And the parents of the team,

they were fine with it.

I explained

to a couple of them.

We were walking out

the gym door,

and the pastor there

at Sacred Heart was coming in.

He stopped me, and he said,

"Mr. Orians,

what are you doing?"

And I said,

"Well, this is what happened

when I went in the gym."

And he goes,

"No, that ain't happening."

And he went back in that gym,

and he got the coaches

and the parents together,

and we went back into the gym

and we played.

Uh...

I didn't know that.

I figured not.

Uh...

[INHALES DEEPLY]

[SIGHS]

What I remember

about that tournament,

a kid on the other team, at

one point, calling me a nigger.

And I remember

there was a time-out,

and my dad must have been near

the bench, and I said to him,

"You know, this kid

called me a nigger."

He looked me in the eye

and he said,

"So, what do you wanna do

about it? Do you wanna quit?

Do you wanna cry?

Or do you wanna keep playing?"

And I was like,

"I wanna keep playing."

And he's like, "Then forget

about it and keep playing,"

which is what I did.

But I-- My memory of that

was always just that

it was this kid, uh...

who had interacted with me.

I definitely remember the trip

to Walls, Mississippi,

because I remember

that you could

get a Coca-Cola for a nickel

in those machines,

and up here,

it was like 10 or 15 cents,

and I'm like,

"Damn, this is great.

Maybe we wanna live here,"

and my father's like,

"No, I don't think we do."

Uh, but it's one of the things

that, uh, you protected

all of us from,

um, and I just wondered

whether those things

were still in your head.

[♪♪♪]

I was thinking about this work

that we're doing,

and thinking about

coming back to Memphis,

that the relationships

that I built here,

uh, even though I haven't

seen people in so long,

are some of the warmest things

that I can ever remember.

And these kind of relationships

are the things

that are important in life.

And it is so good

to see both of you.

And, uh, I just love the fact

that we were able

to grow up together.

Dick, I'm gonna

give you back this ball.

The first integrated

high school game in Memphis,

Catholic, 14,

Father Bertrand, 7.

There you go.

Yeah.

Thank you both so much.

All right.

Jeffery, man, good seeing you.

Absolutely.

Dick, thank you, brother.

All right, buddy.

The promise of Brown, what

a lie that's turned out to be.

American schools today

are almost as segregated

as they were in the '50s.

This is the "victory" document

from the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The document that was circulated

in the Black community

the night before the buses

were gonna be integrated,

a bus boycott that lasted

for more than a year,

where Black women

were going into white homes,

being maids in those homes,

and they were getting up

at 4 and 5:00 in the morning

to walk to those homes

and then walk back

to their homes

in the Black neighborhoods

and get there

maybe at 8:30, 9:00 at night,

try and feed their families,

try and take care

of their families,

and then get up the next day

and do it all over again

for over a year.

And I get 15 minutes late

to work, and I get pissed off.

[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]

This is the victory document.

"The bus driver

is in charge of the bus,

and has been instructed

to obey the law.

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

Where did this come from?

This is the difference

that every Black person

in America knows.

It's the slip

between the law and living.

Yeah, the law says

you can ride that bus

and sit wherever you want,

but don't go getting yourself

killed over it.

[CONTINUES READING

ON-SCREEN TEXT]

"Talk as little as possible,

and always in a quiet tone."

Don't make

white people uncomfortable,

because the cost of that

could be your life.

[CONTINUES READING

ON-SCREEN TEXT]

And I... I don't know

what to say about that one,

and I definitely don't know

what to say about this one.

"If you feel you cannot take it,

walk for another week or two."

This is the difference

between the law and living

when you're Black in America.

[♪♪♪]

When was the last time

you were here in this temple?

Hmm. Fifty years ago.

Larry's funeral.

I remember

it was around 700 people here.

I mean, they was all outside,

it was packed.

And Larry was

in a white casket.

And my mother and father

were standing at his casket.

And they was crying.

This is where the march

started, at Clayborn Temple,

and they marched downtown.

Larry and, uh,

some more of his classmates

had left school,

because the school was urging

everybody to go down there.

And so him and some of his

friends had went down there.

ROBINSON:

What did your family hear

about what actually happened

to Larry?

It was-- Witnesses.

I mean, a lot of witnesses

at that time,

and they said that the officer,

Leslie Dean Jones,

he was running with a shotgun,

and Larry saw him

running with the shotgun.

So he ran in what they call

a boiler room,

and he ordered Larry

to come out.

And Larry, he came out

with his hands in the air

and said, "Don't shoot."

He put the shotgun

in his stomach

and pulled the trigger...

at close range.

At close range.

[♪♪♪]

My mother,

she ran out the house,

she didn't have no shoes on,

and she reached to touch Larry,

and he put the barrel

in her chest

and told her to

"Get back, nigger."

And she said, "That's my son."

When I got home,

my father, Mason Payne,

he was in the driveway,

and he was crying.

And I said,

"Dad, what's wrong?"

He said, "Larry gone.

He won't be back.

He won't be back."

He was a young Black man,

mm-mm...

in school and working.

He didn't have a chance

to live his life.

[SIREN BLARING]

Larry was murdered

in cold blood

for no reason at all.

Devastated. We were devastated.

I mean, still going through it.

Still going through it.

Larry's gone,

but he will never be forgotten,

not by the Payne family.

KING:

But I must confess that, uh,

that dream that I had that day

has, in many points,

turned into a nightmare.

Now, I'm not one to lose hope.

I keep on hoping.

I still have faith

in the future,

but I've had to analyze

many things

over the last few years,

and I would say,

over the last few months,

I've gone through

a lot of soul-searching

and agonizing moments,

and I've come to see

that we have

many more difficult days ahead,

and some of the old optimism

was a little superficial,

and now it must be tempered

with a solid realism.

And I think

the realistic fact is

that we still have

a long, long way to go.

I think the biggest problem now

is that we got our gains

over the last 12 years

at bargain rates, so to speak.

It didn't

cost the nation anything.

In fact, it helped

the economic side of the nation

to integrate lunch counters

and public accommodations.

It didn't

cost the nation anything,

uh, to get the right to vote

established.

And now we are

confronting issues

that cannot be solved

without costing the nation

billions of dollars.

Now, I think

this is where we're getting

our greatest resistance.

They may put it

on many other things,

but we can't get rid

of slums and poverty

without it costing the nation

something.

A lot of people who want change,

they just don't want the change

to cost them anything

or to require them

to change anything

about the way

that they're living.

Fifty years ago,

this report came out.

It came out about three weeks

before King was killed

in my hometown of Memphis.

And these are the things

that it said,

the basic conclusion

of the Kerner Report:

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

Folks, this is what

they're saying 50 years ago.

"The deepening racial divide

is not inevitable.

The movement apart

can be reversed.

Choice is still possible.

Our principal task

is to define that choice

and press

for a national resolution.

To pursue our present course

will involve

the continuing polarization

of the American community

and ultimately the destruction

of basic democratic values."

Does that sound familiar?

[CONTINUES READING

ON-SCREEN TEXT]

"White institutions created it,

white institutions maintain,

and white society condones it."

This is 50 years ago,

and three weeks later, that's

what happened in my hometown.

King was killed

on April 4th, 1968.

He was scheduled to give

a speech in a Memphis church

that Sunday, April 7, 1968.

This is the title of the speech

that was found among his papers

in the Lorraine Motel

after he was killed.

I wonder what that speech

would have been like.

So in 1968,

the Fair Housing Act

ended 34 years

of legal redlining,

and what I wanna tell you for

a few minutes now is about luck.

Because if you look

at this picture,

the guy on your left

with the little gangster lean

and the tilted hat, that's me.

[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]

The guy in the front

with the hat

looking down

at my younger sister

is my younger brother, who's

seated in the front audience.

And that's my father, my older

brother and my younger sister.

That's the house we lived in

in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1962.

In an all-Black neighborhood

in Memphis.

And what happened in '68,

after King was killed,

is that there was a developer

who was essentially buying

all the houses

in our neighborhood.

Well, my dad wouldn't

sell our house.

My dad and my mother

were converted Catholics,

and they wanted their kids

in Catholic school,

and that meant

schools in East Memphis,

and that meant

living in a white neighborhood.

So my dad made a deal

with the developer.

"You buy me a house,

and I'll give you my house."

We went looking at houses.

Every time

we would look at a house,

we would offer the asking price,

and the house would get sold

by somebody else,

or "Another agent sold it,"

or "We lost the contract

when we went fishing

and it fell out of the boat,"

and all these excuses.

This is the house

that we ended up living in.

Four bedrooms,

two and a half bathrooms,

a quiet place for me and my

brothers and sisters to study,

a good school district,

all the things

that Americans say you need

in order to be successful.

We went to look at this house

and offered the asking price,

and we had white friends of ours

go about a half an hour later,

and they offered less money,

and they sold it to them,

but they were buying it for us.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS]

This does bring back

a lot of memories.

Yeah. And it looks

about the same as it was.

It really does.

Mm-hm.

Uh, maybe a little paint,

but this is pretty much

how I remember it.

We moved into this house after

Dr. King was killed in 1969.

And your family played a role

that I never quite understood

until you and I have

just recently talked.

Could you tell us about that?

Well, um,

my mother-in-law was a Realtor.

Now, she was

a 64-year-old Jewish woman

who had been born and raised

in Memphis.

And so she agreed

to be your parents' Realtor,

and she would show them houses,

and when they came

and saw this house,

it was a brand-new house.

The real estate agent

came to the door,

and at first,

I think she thought

my mother-in-law was

the customer.

My mother-in-law gave her

her card,

and when she realized it,

she said something

and slammed the door

in their face.

Uh, so by that time,

they'd seen so many houses,

they just said,

"We've got to find another way."

So then their friends,

Web and Pat Smith,

were the ones

who bought the house,

and when they came

and the Realtor saw them,

she was very excited and happy.

And so then

they bought the house

and transferred it

to your parents.

And what I remember

is you and Andy,

and my parents...

I have this memory of you guys

laughing in our living room,

and I knew it had something

to do with a house,

and I knew you and Andy

had somehow helped us

to get this house,

and we couldn't talk about it

until we moved in

because my parents

were concerned

that somebody would do

something to the house

if they knew we were moving in.

Yeah, well...

But then after you moved in,

did you have much difficulty

in the neighborhood?

I remember the first week

that we moved in,

my daddy sat

on the carport right here,

under the carport,

in a lawn chair

with a shotgun across his lap.

And he would sit there

until early in the morning

because he was gonna be ready

if somebody came to the house.

Wow, I didn't realize that.

I remember it took a while

for people to get used to us

living here.

The woman that lived

right here came over

the day we moved in,

to the front door,

and she had a plate

of chocolate chip cookies.

And I am addicted

to chocolate chip cookies,

and I have been

ever since I was a kid.

And she knocked on the door,

and my mom opened the door,

and I had run behind my mom,

just to see who it was.

And she said, "May I speak

to the lady of the house?"

And my mother said,

"You're looking at her."

And she just spun

and walked back to the house.

Taking the cookies with her.

I was like,

"Could I have just one cookie?"

[♪♪♪]

And so that was

me and Herbert's room.

Right.

That was Teresa and Michelle.

And was that your room

or the bathroom?

That's the bathroom,

then my window...

Your window faces that way.

The yard looks even

a little bigger than I remember.

I just remember it being huge...

and having to use those clippers

along the edges of the fence

to cut that grass

that he never could stand.

With all the shit we were taking

about moving in here,

he's like, you know,

"My yard will be the best yard."

The showplace.

Yeah.

There's a cemetery right across

the street, and I remember, uh,

soon after we moved in,

I was over there one night.

Uh, I'd just

come out of the house,

I don't know what I was doing,

but I was sitting on the wall,

and a police car pulled up.

And the officers got out

and asked me who I was,

and they patted me down, and

they said, "Where do you live?"

I said, "I live

right across the street.

I'm just hanging out." They

said, "You don't live there."

And they brought me over here,

and of course,

Mommy answered the door,

and they're like,

"Just wanted to bring your son

home, make sure he was safe."

I'm like, "No. They were

saying I didn't live here.

They didn't believe me."

And then I remember Mommy

and Daddy always saying,

"Well, we don't

have to move far,

'cause we're just going

right across the street."

So the cemetery

across the street

is where they're both buried.

[♪♪♪]

Shortly before my dad died,

he was asking whether he and

my mom made the right decision,

saying, "I know

it was hard on you

and your brothers and sisters,

and living in that neighborhood

had its challenges,

and maybe it wasn't

the right decision."

And, uh, I don't know

what would have happened

to my brothers

or my sisters or me

if we hadn't come here.

This is part of

what made me who I am.

This is what luck looks like.

I have worked as hard

as anybody in this theater

to get where I am today,

and I am proud of that.

But I am lucky.

I was not the smartest kid

in my neighborhood,

and that ball

that we saw rolling back

when King got shot,

the only reason I didn't

get crushed by that ball

is that I had

unicorns for parents,

who figured out some way

to get their kids

into a situation

where they had

a better chance to succeed.

And if that's what it takes

to have a legitimate chance

at success,

having unicorns for parents,

or just having dumb luck...

Is that really a country

that you want to live in?

And so when you hear words,

when you hear the concept

expressed of "white privilege,"

I am begging you to think

about that in a different way.

White privilege doesn't mean

that you haven't worked hard.

It doesn't mean that you haven't

overcome obstacles.

It means that you walk

through the world differently

than the Black and brown people

in this country.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]

It does not take away

from your hard work

or your accomplishments at all.

It simply says

this playing field is not level.

And that's because racism

is more than just prejudice.

It is prejudice

plus social power,

plus legal authority.

And Black and brown people

have never had

the last two in America.

[MAN WHOOPS, AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]

Not when we were brought here

as enslaved people,

not during

the Civil Rights Movement,

and not while Barack Obama

was in the White House.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]

So, what did

our prison population look like

as we entered the Nixon years?

Looked like about that,

just under 400,000 people.

Here's what John Ehrlichman

had to say

about Nixon's strategy.

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

And when we hear, today,

America say,

"My God, the opioid epidemic,

it's taking our children.

This is horrible.

It's a medical issue.

We can't treat our children

as enemies in a war.

We have to help our children."

I'm not trying to be facetious

or to say that's not right.

Of course it's right.

But where was that sentiment

when crack cocaine was

destroying Black communities?

[AUDIENCE CHEERS, APPLAUDS]

This is Bill Clinton

signing the 1994 Crime Bill,

a bill that did more damage

to racial justice

in the criminal legal system

than any bill that

I can remember in a long time.

This is not about

Democrat or Republican.

This is about America.

Bill Clinton is saying...

[READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]

And he was speaking the truth,

because the values

that America has expressed

up to that point,

and with what that law did,

they were the values

of mass incarceration

and white supremacy.

[♪♪♪]

So, what happened?

That's what happened.

And it wasn't an accident.

[INDISTINCT CHATTERING]

ROBINSON:

And so here...

are pictures of what

I refer to as "snuff films,"

things that we have now gotten

used to seeing in America.

The killings of Black

and brown men and women.

[♪♪♪]

The ten cities with the largest

police departments

collectively paid out

$1.02 billion

between 2010 and 2015

in police misconduct cases,

which include alleged beatings,

shootings

and wrongful imprisonments.

You can't pay a billion dollars

for police misconduct

and not have criminal activity.

So we now know

that to some Americans,

Black Lives Matter

is a hate group.

And what I would encourage you

to think about...

is that the things

that they're saying

about Black Lives Matter

activists today

are the exact same things

they were saying

about Martin Luther King

in the '60s.

Martin Luther King was arrested

30 times in 12 years.

We have a word for that.

It's called "thug."

That's what we refer to

activists today as, in America,

because they're in our face.

They're making us look at things

we don't want to look at.

They're interrupting

our football games.

[AUDIENCE MURMURS]

KING:

We've gotta give ourselves

to this struggle until the end.

Nothing would be more tragic

than to stop,

at this point in Memphis.

We've gotta see it through.

ROBINSON:

America was at the point

where we were going to move

from who we were

to who we could be,

and who we always wanted to be.

And I remember thinking

as a kid,

"Well, who's going

to lead us now?"

The leader that was going to

make this movement go somewhere

had been taken away,

and I think that's a lesson

to be learned about this work,

and a lesson that the women who

established Black Lives Matter

have learned clearly:

You can't kill one person

and stop

the Black Lives Matter movement.

And the three women that set it

up that way did it on purpose,

so that there would be leaders

in small communities

all around America.

WOMAN: Say his name!

ALL [CHANTING]: George Floyd.

MAN: No justice.

ALL: No peace.

ROBINSON:

You are seeing Black people,

brown people, white people,

people from every race

in this country,

demonstrating together.

That has never happened before

on the scale

that it's happening right now.

WOMAN: Say her name!

ALL: Breonna Taylor!

The possibility of

radical change is in the air.

ALL [CHANTING]:

Whose streets? Our streets!

Whose streets? Our streets!

I want to tell you why

you were invited here tonight,

and it really comes down

to this:

50 years from now, somebody,

maybe in an auditorium

like this,

is going to be talking

to a group of people

about what happened

in this generation.

Did we turn up the volume

on our videos and our TV

and just let

that ball roll back,

like we have every single time

we've come to a tipping point?

Or did this generation decide

to do something different?

And I hope and expect

that each one of you

will be out there with me

pushing that ball

to a new direction.

Thank you very much

and good night.

[AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING]

[SINGER VOCALIZING]

♪ Well, I woke up this morning

With my mind ♪

♪ Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Woke up this morning

With my mind ♪

♪ Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Woke up this morning

With my mind ♪

♪ Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Well, I'm walkin'

And talkin' ♪

♪ With my mind

Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Oh, yes, I'm walkin'

And talkin' with my mind ♪

♪ You know

That it's stayed on freedom ♪

♪ I said, I'm walkin'

And talkin' with my mind ♪

♪ You know

That it's stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

CHOIR: ♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

CHOIR: ♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Oh, well, ain't no harm

With your mind ♪

♪ Come on, now!

Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Oh, no, there ain't no harm

With your mind ♪

♪ You know it!

Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ You can sing along, now ♪

♪ Ain't no harm with your mind ♪

♪ You know it!

Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

CHOIR: ♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

CHOIR: ♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Come on and walk, now ♪

♪ Walk, walk

You better walk, walk ♪

♪ Come on and walk, walk

With your mind on freedom! ♪

♪ Walk, walk ♪

♪ Come on and walk, walk ♪

♪ You better walk, walk

With your mind on freedom! ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

♪ You better walk ♪

CHOIR: ♪ Walk ♪

♪ Come on and walk ♪

♪ While I'm singing and shoutin'

With my mind, yeah ♪

♪ Stayed on freedom!

Are you stayed on freedom? ♪

♪ Singing and shoutin'

With my mind, yeah ♪

♪ Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ You know, you're singing

And shoutin' with my mind ♪

♪ You know that!

Stayed on freedom ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ Come on and sing! ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ One more time! Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelu ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

[AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING]