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(Ominous music)
[Director] This is a film about storytelling.
About how we tell the story of our country's past.
Why do we want to believe one version and not another?
Maybe because it makes us feel safe at night.
There's one episode
of America's history that is told very differently,
depending on who you are and where you live.
It is the story of our civil war and what came after.
(explosion)
(drums)
- The hot winds of war blew across
the land, made of it a country divided.
Friend turned into foe, brother fought against brother.
It was such a long and drawn out
struggle and a feeling on both sides was so intense.
- We're all just romantics lost
in contemporary times, you might say every one of us
feels like we born 125 years too late.
(slow music)
- To introduce myself, my name is Rachel Boynton.
This is Nelson Walker.
We are independent documentary filmmakers.
We're making a film about how we tell the story of the Civil War.
We're filming in lots of different schools
all over the country.
And going to places with a deep connection to this history.
(loud cheering)
- There's a lot more coming.
[Student] What made you choose the civil war
and reconstruction?
[Director] Well, you know, America is kind of like a big
family that tore itself apart during the civil war.
And in order to make peace,
we told ourselves a certain story about it.
And for a long time, we had trouble telling
the difference between that story and the truth.
You can ask me anything you want.
[Student] What did you want to do when you
were little and did you have
a backup for if you couldn't get that?
[Director] When I was really little, I wanted to be Superman.
When I got a little bit older, I wanted to be an anthropologist.
Do you know what an anthropologists is?
- No - Somebody
who goes around the world and studies the way other
people live like this. - So like this?
[Director] Kind of like this.
Yeah.
[Isabel] People are having to come
to grips with the civil war and enslavement,
which are the sort of founding bases of the country.
Our country is like a really old house.
You may not want to go
into that basement, but if you really don't go
into that basement, it's at your own peril.
Whatever you're ignoring will be
there to be reckoned with until you reckon with it.
(ominous music)
(children talking)
[Instructor] These voices were all happening
on the eve of the civil war.
I'm interested in what you think about it.
I'm interested in who, who's saying this.
And I'm also going to give you
the secession documents from South Carolina.
Where is he from? What's what's he about?
Who is he?
[Student] He's a Philadelphia congressman, I believe.
[Instructor] No, Ohio. I think he's from Ohio.
So he delivers this when?
When is this written? Because that's one of the
questions that I asked. - December, 22nd, 1860.
[Instructor] Exactly.
And what is he basically saying?
- He doesn't want secession
because he knows if there is secession
there will be a huge war.
[Instructor] People will know this war with their own eyes.
They will, you know, really experience war amongst ourselves.
He sounds scared, doesn't he? [Student] Yeah.
[Instructor] Yeah. I think he probably was.
What stood out to you in the arguments?
[Student] So our article was presented
by Alexander Stephens in Atlanta, Georgia.
And not once does he talk about
slavery, property and what the war is really
about, what they're really fighting for.
[Instructor] Other voices? Yeah.
[Student] I noticed there seems to be
a common idea that the civil war was totally about slavery.
I'm going to disagree with that.
The South did want to leave
the union because of slavery, but the issue of the Civil War
was keeping the south in the union.
So slavery isn't like
the entire issue. - Push back? Comments?
(school bell rings)
We will continue tomorrow.
(student chatter)
[Instructor] You are a thinker.
That is for sure.
The wedge is the slavery issue, right?
I think we're agreed on that.
It's just a way of describing it.
Yeah. Good, good job.
Go, go, go.
[Director] You're spending a lot of time
telling the story of the Civil War
and Reconstruction in your eighth grade class.
Why?
- Because I think
we have not adequately,
you know, understood who we are as a nation.
There's so much of this history
that has been way too difficult for this country to look at.
The reason it's important
to understand this history is because we carry it within us.
These things need to be unpacked and looked at and talked about
and and we need to decide what we think about them now.
It's challenging, but it's, it's where the juice is.
(distant dog bark)
- We call it a war between the states here.
We don't call it a civil war.
[Director] Why is it important to cause
the war between the states?
- Because that's what it was.
It wasn't a civil war.
[Herb] Or the war of northern aggression.
The North came down here and divided us.
We didn't go up there. - My grandmother was saying they
had to hide the food in the chimney because
the soldiers came in, would take everything they had.
They took all their livestock, any food that was in the house.
It was terrible.
And the war took place in our backyard.
But the people up north, the war was a distant thing.
We're both members of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans
and we are responsible for taking care of this cemetery.
But I'm afraid when the Herb
are gone and our generations, that it'll,
there's not gonna be anybody around to take care of it.
[Herb] Or to promote the true history
of the 1860-1865 period of time.
[Director] This class that I'm filming,
the teacher is teaching the cause of the war is slavery.
- Oh, really?
[Director] And so
does that offend you? [Herb] Yes.
[Director] can you explain to me why?
[Herb] Because it's not true.
You're telling stories that aren't true about
my my ancestry, about my family, about my country, the south.
[Director] And what's, tell me what
the untrue thing is? [Herb] Slavery.
They are not telling the whole story.
Slavery was one of the reasons.
But but for that professor to say that economics
had nothing to do with that war is totally false.
- I would have fought for the South.
You know why? It had nothing to do with political reason.
Because my home was being invaded.
(somber music)
[Dr. Blight] The Confederacy lost this war big time.
No Americans have ever lost
a war quite like the Confederacy, lost this war.
(slow music)
White southerners are going
to need to process what the meaning of that whole
collapse of their society really is.
And their explanation of their defeat becomes a narrative.
It becomes a memory,
it becomes the lost cause tradition
and the lost cause tradition was this argument
that the Confederacy had really fought for noble aims.
The war wasn't really entirely about slavery.
It was about defending their
homelands, their families, their women.
The slavery was not the great issue. If it were left to them,
they would have handled slavery over time and maybe even gotten
rid of it themselves, they said, which is nonsense.
There were alternative textbooks
eventually published in the South,
and it wasn't just textbooks they were trying to control.
It was the stories being widely told in the public arena,
and they had a tremendous influence.
So what is at stake in the memory
of the American Civil War, is who gets to control this narrative?
The story.
[Director] Ok, wait. I've got to move the microphone
before I get started.
Yeah.
Do you have any questions for me?
[Student] I had one. I forgot what it was.
Do you consider yourself a radical person?
[Director] Am I a radical person?
No, I'm not a radical person. I think I'm someone
who questions things. I'm questioning the stories we
tell, like in your class, the story about slavery, right?
They tell us something about why we're so divided.
Do you see us living in a divided country?
- Every day.
(somber music)
(children chatter)
[Student] The Holmes Central High School creed.
I am a member of the Holmes Central High School family.
Education first our motto.
[Instructor] The kids that I have here are determined to not
follow in the footsteps of what was in the past.
I'm hoping I can spark something to say.
I want to know more.
I want to learn more. [Director] In Mississippi,
do people talk about slavery as the cause of the war?
[Instructor] You don't really hear the word
slavery or slaves in Mississippi.
That was an incidental part of it.
I guess the simple term is whitewash.
As I told my clients, is that
a lot of time you want to see the good part
of the history, especially the history that you
are part of, and you want to minimize
the bad part about it.
Slavery is not an easy topic to tackle for black or for white.
[Director] So how do you tackle the story of slavery?
[Instructor] One thing is that, the slaves
were more powerful than you give them credit for.
[Student] People say that Lincoln freed
the slaves, but you say actually they freed themselves.
[Instructor] That was a question?
- Why couldn't slaves free themselves
in a sense, before all of this if they freed themselves?
[Instructor] We didn't have the abolition. We we did have was
Nat Turner, you know, you had those people who step forward.
Those people to me were just as brave
as the 1960's, probably more brave.
[Student] Come on.
[Instructor] Think about Nat Turner.
[Student] Slave. He's crazy.
To make a change, you got to be a little crazy.
[Instructor] That's it. He calls people to think. He went
from plantation to plantation, killing everybody.
And he wanted to kill the women and children.
He wanted to do that, why?
[Student] you expect for a dude to be dead,
you expect our mother, three kids, stuff like that
the pay, you got him. If you want them,
he's dead. He set the right tone.
You out here killing wives, children. Oh yeah.
[Student] He probably was a grumpy slave owner anyway.
[Instructor] Don't take for granted the lives that were lost.
Who was brave enough to try to system when it's wrong?
That's what makes these guys to be heroic.
We can't devalue what we did.
A white guy whose grandfather
was a confederate and they can't keep their memory alive.
Why can't we?
[Student] In Holmes County,
I noticed how we had the Browns and the Williams.
I mean, we also had Caucasian people with the same last name.
And I was I always wondering, like,
is there a relation between the two?
And then I learned that,
you know, slaves got their last names from their slave owners.
So is like, did this family own this
family or like did they? I always wondered about that.
[Director] There's this enormous history
of slavery in Holmes County.
Do people ever talk about that? [Student] About?
[Director] Just the question of the history of slavery here?
- No.
[Director] Do you know if your ancestors were enslaved here?
- I don't know.
[Director] Would you want to know?
- Not really. [Director] Why?
- Because I don't want to
think about what all they went through for us.
[Director] How come?
- Because they worked for all their life being
enslaved and not being treated right.
They'll just bring
me down because they suffered and I wish somebody could've
did something back then to help them out.
[Director] And so you don't want to think
about it because it makes you sad.
- Mm hmm.
- I don't want to hate people.
And I want to hate people based on their
character towards me now, not what they did
hundreds of years to go or their family did
hundreds of years ago.
[Director] I think white people are afraid
that it's going to make them feel ashamed.
- Yeah, I think so, too.
That's why it's, they probably when they're teaching,
I know I keep going back to, you know, the teaching. But it's
where it all starts because I doubt you, if
a white man would tell his six year old daughter,
we own slaves or we did this to slaves or like,
I doubt if that happens.
- I think we all should learn the real history because
as black people, we think we know, but we don't.
I never met my great
grandmother, and, you know, they don't talk about slavery,
and the racial desegregation.
They don't talk about it.
[Director] Would you want to ask her about it?
- I would,
but I wouldn't.
I think she would say she don't know, to avoid the conversation.
[Director] And why do you think she would
want to avoid the conversation?
- It might hurt her,
she might feel mad about it.
[Director] It's hard to talk about things like that.
- Yeah.
(slow music)
[Instructor] It's personal around here, we're in a southern
city and we're talking about the civil war.
And I'm going to have students
who are pulling for the Confederacy.
I was that student, I pulled
for the Confederacy because they're southern.
I'm Southern, right.
And it's not about slavery in your mind.
It's just like it's the Cowboys versus the Redskins.
And you want the Cowboys to win the football game, right?
That's what it is in their head.
So when you throw slavery in there, it complicates it.
It's not a football game.
This was real.
Most history classes we teach
that the winners write history, the civil war,
the losers end up writing the history.
When we look at Southerners and how they try
to twist the narrative of what happens, I want us to put
ourselves in their shoes and look at why.
If you can teach empathy when it comes to history.
I think it's such a powerful
thing for the rest of your lives.
All right, boys, in your packet,
turn to new perspectives on slavery.
What we've got here are statistics about slavery.
And I want you to talk about what jumps out at you.
[Student] It says about
like one point one million Southern white families owned no
slaves and that only about three hundred and fifty
a little over 350,000 owned slaves.
That's only like a fourth or
fifth, which actually a pretty crazy statistic.
So a handful of people have,
you know, one like five slaves that probably was just around
the household, which probably were treated pretty well.
[Instructor] Well, it depends.
[Student] Of course, the southerners were trying to,
you know, I mean, they weren't treated
like regular humans, but they they took care of them
because they were like a way to make money.
[Instructor] Correct. It's an investment.
That's my money. I need to take care of my money.
I want that to keep producing more money for me.
Therefore, I take care of it and I don't take care of it
and provide. I mean, it's still a dirt floor they sleep on.
You know, it's still I'm working 10 to 12 hours.
It's not.
Let's look at 210, whippings per person.
In the south, where was the wealth?
So owning land and owning slaves?
if I invested twenty three thousand dollars in something,
I don't want to beat it to a pulp.
Right?
So why do they do it? [Student] Fear.
[Instructor] Fear, you hit on it. That's the word.
Here's what American slavery is about, money and fear.
They are making lots of money
and they are terrified of what happens if this goes away.
What happens when people talk
about abolition and emancipation?
What do I start picturing in my head?
[Student] Getting lynched? [Instructor] Yes, retribution.
They're going to come after us.
So you could look at and say,
you know, the situation's not great, but
I don't want to get lynched.
I don't like people throwing rocks through my windows.
(woman on tv) The violence.
Police officers pointed guns into crowds of young people.
It was shocking to me.
Why are we still in a war in this country over race?
- Slavery? - Slavery, It lasted 200 years.
You have to develop a psychology on the part of the white people
who are doing this that involves enormous acts of denial.
We haven't even claimed it as the horrific system that it was.
- She says slavery is the cause.
And so many white people that we hear say, don't talk to me about
slavery, I didn't own slaves, my parents didn't own slaves.
- The cultural conditioning that began in slavery has continued.
The privileges that you see some
white people have goes back to, I'm more than you.
I'm better than you. - Why? why? why?
Why are they better?
- Oh, I don't believe it. - I know it,
but why do they think they're better?
- Privilege.
Privilege has told them they're better.
- I mean, they don't even know that they're privileged.
I remember a book I read in seminary.
- Excuse me. I don't buy that.
They don't know they're privileged.
- They have a
well, no, I serve a congregation of overeducated white people
who don't recognize their privilege.
They don't see that you start that.
It's just the norm. It's their norm.
- If you don't feel that you are privileged,
how do you account for the differences between
white people and disadvantaged black people?
- They're not comparing themselves to black people.
Like my white friends are mostly comparing themselves
to other highly educated, well-off white friends.
- But when you say white people can't get it, I don't.
I don't buy it.
- Well, I don't know why they can't get.
- I don't buy it for a moment.
Since the 60s, I have been proving myself.
And there comes a point in life when you say I'm done.
It's on them now because I know I'm Ok.
So the way I look at it, is your loss.
I don't intend to spend all of my life proving to white
people that I'm Ok. - Don't prove it
just I think we've got to educate.
We got to educate them. - No, we don't.
- Well, I'm what I'm saying is that
there's nothing wrong with having a conversation...
[Instructor] Last night I was at this dinner,
it was this conversation about
slavery being the source of our racial problems.
The topic of white privilege came up a lot.
You know, the idea of, you know,
white people have advantages in this country
or,
yeah, I mean, advantages.
Or you could flip it around, say black people have
disadvantages in this country simply because of skin tone.
[Student] I feel like it kind of goes both ways.
Sometimes white people have a disadvantage.
I had a friend a couple of years ago,
his cumulative GPA was like a 4.26
and then he had a friend that was black
that had like a 3.9 like a 33.
And they both applied
to Princeton and the black kid got in.
I feel like everyone says, well, there's a lot of white
privilege, so we have to give other, like
other ethnicities advantages in this place instead of trying
to view everyone as just like an American.
[Student] I mean, just not talking about
the race issue, just not
bringing it up to the next generation would
keep them natural in that sense and they would not be racist.
- I don't think that slavery
and the Civil War and Jim Crow should be forgotten.
I think that they should be remembered because I think
they're an important lesson that America isn't perfect
and to, like, work against that in the future.
[Instructor] If you look at things like
the incarceration rate for, you know,
young black men in this country, why it's so disproportional or
why you have the socioeconomic situations that you have
between, say, white people and black people,
that you can see this didn't come out of nowhere.
This isn't a reflection of the tone of somebody's skin.
It's based in history that goes back before your generation,
before my generation, before my grandparents.
It goes way back.
[Student] I think there's a balance
between recognizing our past,
but also not over talking it and just overemphasizing
the problem to where it's always on our minds.
And then it's difficult to be very equal when that's something
that's always on your mind, is racism and things like that.
(somber music)
- So please welcome
Dr. Kelly Carter Jackson.
(applause)
[Kelly] So first off, I want to tell you
a story about one of my students,
he raised his hand and he said, who is Harriet Tubman?
I was like, oh, my God, I tried really hard, you know,
to sort of like as a professor, you have to, like,
fix your face before I could answer the question.
He goes, oh, I remember.
She's the woman who wouldn't get off the bus.
And I was like, no, no, that's not her at all.
But it's important because I
think it highlights the fact that we only see, like,
one great black man and one great black woman per century.
So, Force and Freedom, my book really tries
to introduce new voices and to highlight black abolitionist
in particular.
The moment the first black person is enslaved,
they're pushing back. They're collecting arms as much as they
possibly can to prepare for what they believe is inevitable,
and that is the violent overthrow of slavery.
- There seems to be a kind of particular resistance
to teaching this aspect of American history.
And, look and I think, you know, I'm also a historian
I can understand. I can dissipate why.
But I just want to get you to talk about
it takes your book
to underscore force as well as freedom.
You know, and we all know that that's
a part of this history, but it's not taught that way.
[Kelly] It's not taught, I think,
because we have this hypocritical, I think,
hypocritical love affair with violence.
We talk about violence, I think, in these really romantic ways.
But that's only when we're talking about white men.
When the situation is reversed,
it is terrifying to think of black people using force or
using violence to bring about their freedom.
(crew chatter)
[Director] so I want to talk to you about
what you've learned so far, right, in college.
Is there anything you've learned
here about the story of the civil war that would be
hard to talk about with people back home?
[Student] Yeah, my daddy is that typical
Southern male, a lot of he knows
everything and you don't question him.
And, you know, I love him to death.
That's just the way he
is, that's the way people are down here.
If I told him that the main
cause of the Civil War was slavery and he would probably
like open the Bible and start
preaching at me and stuff like that, I don't know.
[Director] How would he find that offensive?
Well, my
great great grandfather did
fight in the Civil War and he did come back like he
didn't die or anything. He came back alive.
But it may set him up so bad.
And it was a bad situation
for my family at the time that I would not know near enough
about to really like be able to give details.
But
it's just like a remembrance of how hard times were
at that time, because it was really hard
for my family because we're born and raised in Pontotoc, Mississippi.
And like in my grandparents
house, there's a no telling how old rebel
flag like in one of those flag boxes like this.
And we don't, you know, take it out.
We don't rub it in people's noses.
It's just, you know, up there above a cabinet.
(Rhythmic drum music)
- It has been called the war
brother against brother, the Civil War
soldier and nation together found that their fears
and doubts were not so strong as their faith.
And in national shrines like
Gettysburg, we memorialize the men of both
sides who gave of themselves unreservedly for what they
believe to be right. Remember and be proud.
[Dr. Blight] We've never really had a racial reckoning.
The problem started first immediately after the war,
if you want north and south to get together and get along
again, you don't talk about causes and consequences.
You talk about the mutual valor on that battlefield.
(somber music)
Why doesn't that Confederacy,
which only lasted four years, just go away?
The racial reasons are paramount, but it also has to do
with this idea that the Confederacy was a decent.
Man, they went to the limit and
they deserved respect for all that courage.
They claim after they've lost that they were only reacting
to the overreach of centralized federal power.
And there's a kind of admiration for that still in our culture.
(upbeat music)
- James McGill, he settled this farm almost 200
years ago, and I felt like I've followed in his footsteps.
My wife raised the children.
All I ever did was work.
Of course, now, federal government took my farm.
So
so I had it financed
with federal government, farmers, home administration.
They wouldn't redo my loans.
During the war and reconstruction.
People in the South lost everything.
Well, I can empathize with them.
It made me mad and I couldn't understand why they were mad.
And they and they spent 150 years and them
people are still mad in the south about it.
It's wrong for the federal government to dictate
to the states what they should or should not do.
And ever since the war, no one's property has been secure.
And there's a lot of talk of reparations for slaves.
You know, my great great grandfather, nobody paid
Abraham Lincoln, emancipated the slaves.
He didn't get paid for it.
The war to prevent southern
independence changed our country for the worse.
In my opinion. - And what do you think?
Do you think the war changed the country for the worse?
- I'm trying to process everything.
I do understand
parts of what my father's speaking on because I feel
that way, that the government is too big and has too much power.
It's an invasion.
But how long would it take to free the slaves?
How long would it have taken
for them to realize that slavery is wrong?
[Director] Do you think slavery left
an imprint on the mindset of people in America?
- Sure. It left an imprint, but
I'm saying the war left more of an imprint.
That's my personal opinion. [Director] For black and white?
- Yes.
[Director] So you feel like the war itself
was a bigger aggression than slavery?
- Yes.
[Director] It feels like you're dismissing
the experience of millions of enslaved people.
It feels like you're not seeing what they
experienced at the hands of the people who were enslaving them.
I mean, how is treating people
as property not a greater horror?
- Well, my feeling was that it was legal.
It was a settled way of or they had laws that they
had to live up to and forced on them and treat them like
civilly. I don't hate James McGill.
I just want our schools and universities to stop
teaching our children to hate our southern ancestors.
They don't deserve that.
(ominous music)
[Director] Do you know what the Confederate flag looks like?
[Student] Yes, it has a cross and it's red, white and blue
with stars going through the cross.
[Director] Where have you seen that flag?
- I see it when I'm driving,
when I'm traveling, I see at, where I live,
I live in the countryside, and the countryside
I travel to Greenwood and it's
white people back there, there's no black people.
And I see a lot of Confederate
flags that hang out the houses to hang out the mailboxes.
I see it on the back of people trucks.
[Director] And what does it make you think?
- Grow up.
Basically.
[Director] In class, you said you were a good public speaker.
- Yes, I am.
[Director] What makes you a good speaker?
- My projection, my performance.
When I speak, I capture your attention.
I know that I capture attention.
I do oratoricals. I've won first place in
five, six oratoriclas. That's all of them I
competed in and I won second place once.
[Director] I hadn't noticed any white kids
at the school, are there any white kids at this school?
- No. [Director] Why is that?
- I would say, in my personal opinion,
I don't know if this why, but I will simply say
the fact of segregation like is, is how we are here, like.
It just socially happened like this is the black kids school,
Central Holmes is the white kids school,
that's just how the neighborhood,
that's how the parents separated everything.
[Director] Have you ever had a white friend?
- No.
No, I've never, I've never.
Been around a white person long enough. I've never had
a complete conversation to even become associates.
[Director] Do you think that the civil
war was relevant to your life?
- I feel that it's relevant because
your past, your history is your story.
Whether or not you know or not, it's your story.
(children chatter)
(dramatic music)
- These are the 209,145 African Americans
in the union army, that fought in the Civil War.
They served in every branch in the Army. 142 Color
Infantry Regiments, 7 Color Calvary Regiments,
13 Color Artillery Regiments, and it's color pioneer regiments.
They looked at each as family because if you serving
for three years, all you have is your comrades,
(marching count)
- your left, your left, right.
Who's on your left.
Your left,
your left, your left, right. Your left,
your left,
your left, your left, your left, right.
Company, halt.
So this is the African-American Civil War Museum.
The monument and museum
were built to correct a great wrong in history.
America has wrote a history about
that whole conflict that did not include African-Americans
and these African-American soldiers and their great role
in ending that war to preserve the nation
and enslavement here in the United States.
The war started, but for two years,
President Lincoln wouldn't let blacks join the army.
Well, once he realized he couldn't win this war without us
then the war starts to change in Lincoln's favor.
150,000, they were enslaved, living in those southern states.
They literally end up
with uniforms on and rifles in their pockets.
So if you're thinking to yourself, I live in a world
that's out of control and there's nothing I can do
about it. Well, there is something you can do about it and you can
take lessons from these people whose stories we tell here
in this museum. I think it's liberating.
[Director] We're making this film about how
we tell the story of the Civil War.
And I think you guys just finished that unit, right?
[Student] yeah.
[Director] What did you think?
[Student] You know, I feel like it's living in this country is
like, oh, the civil war, you know about it.
But when you start to learn about it, there's so many, like,
intricate details of why things happened.
And I think it's important that we learn about it.
But the one thing that
does,
like, not concern me, but
most people here have the same
kinds of political views which, you know, it's great to be
around people who think like you.
But at the same time, there's no, like, real conversation.
There's no real dialog
and understanding like people who have different views
than you, which is, I think, how we can move forward.
Um, I think that's important. - And in order for people
to really get your perspective and understand where you're
coming from, what's one thing they should know about you?
- Right.
I mean,
the biggest thing for me is gender.
I try to present as masculinely as I can, but,
you know, people still sometimes
take me for a girl and that's like the biggest thing that's
kind of hard for me to deal with.
Yeah, that's probably the big that's the biggest one.
[Director] It's like you're not getting fully seen.
- Right, yeah.
[Dr. Blight] Reconstruction has been the most
contested question in America's historical memory.
Reconstruction is a period
of time that begins immediately after the war,
a 10 to 12 year era when America had to truly reinvent itself.
Fourteenth Amendment puts equal
protection of the law into the U.S. Constitution.
And the right to vote for black men in the 15th Amendment was
a constitutional and legal revolution,
and some black spokesmen by the 1890s and the turn
of the 20th century would often refer to 1865 as the year zero
of a new calendar, a new beginning to history itself.
But you have to incorporate
the white south into an American union,
a society that had just lost approximately
18 percent of its adult male population in war.
How do you reunify those people
at the emotional level with the side that is the victor?
- We're having our monthly Civil War roundtable,
we call ourselves the East Bridgewater Civil War
Roundtable, named after a town. - We sent 300 men from this town.
- I think it was four. - Closer to 400.
- 50 of them died. The basis of our meeting tonight.
We call it reconstruction.
You know, what went right and what went wrong.
All right.
Holy mackerel. Hello.
What a crowd.
We're going to talk about reconstruction,
the physical period of time from from 1865 to 1877.
You know, in the school system, we came to reconstruction
and the chapter ended on the Civil War.
- How are you going to rebuild this part of the country
with malice towards... as Lincoln's words.
How are you going to do that?
- No one on the civilian side on the Confederate presidency
was ever forced to concede and repudiate what they believed.
And we allowed a group of people that waged an armed insurrection
against their government to build statues to their heroes.
So that has kept it alive.
We have never solved the core problem, the civil war.
And that's why reconstruction didn't have a chance. The north
was fighting back and forth during
the whole reconstruction period.
And let's not forget the elephant in the middle
of the room, north and south were racists, period.
The black was not considered to be a human being.
- How are ya?
[Director] Excuse me, I have a question.
Have you ever had
an African-American member in this group?
Because it struck me
in the conversation about race that everyone was white.
- No, we haven't. - Have you looked at
the demographic of east Bridgewater and the area?
- Where in the 90s,
which is well, which is an odd thing because we
live, we border Brockton, which is predominantly
minorities, which are really the majorities now.
I mean, how do you reach out to say that they're welcome?
Well, I mean, they're welcome, but how do you
make them feel that they're welcome?
I mean, here I think we'd make them feel welcomed.
How do you how do you do that?
I mean, yeah, that's a good question.
I'll have to think about that.
The same question is why we live right next to Brockton and we
don't have a large population of blacks.
- I live in the town of Kingston and there's not a large
population of blacks in the town of Kingston.
You know,
the Silverlake Regional High School is the fourth or fifth
largest diversified high school with, you know, 1500 kids in it.
I mean, there are a few families.
But why? Yet, you go into Brockton
or you go into New Bedford or Fall River, the cities,
you tend to find a larger minority community.
Is it because those minorities
feel more comfortable there? You know?
I don't know.
I don't have the answers.
* Facing the rising sun *
* of our new day begun *
* let's us march on til victory is won *
Woo!
[Greg] At the end it says shadow beneath our hand
may be forever stand, true to our God,
true to our native land.
See, these guys were tricky. By native land
what were they talking about? [Student] Us.
[Greg] Us, our land?
Meaning what? What does us mean to you?
What was reconstruction?
When was it? After slavery. Yes.
- After the Civil War. - After the Civil War.
This was when black people tried to teach
America how to have a real democracy during reconstruction,
black people were able to vote in the South and they got
in the state legislators and passed laws
to say things like, everybody should go to school for free.
And they say white people too?
Yeah, white people, you poor white people.
This man right here,
John Mercer Langston, came out of slavery in Virginia.
He came to D.C. as a congressman from Virginia.
This man was born into slavery.
You know, he's crazy. I got seen, no problem, I'll
be back. You know, I mean, it's Congressman Langston now.
That's why I love reconstruction.
You had real heroes.
Are we any different than these people were?
No, we're not. You know the difference?
We just don't remember.
My name is Greg Carr and I'm
an associate professor and chair of the Department
of Afro-American Studies here at Howard University.
[Director] And what connection do you have to the history,
to the history of the civil war and reconstruction?
[Greg] Well,
in addition to the direct history, my ancestors have
been brought here from North Carolina and Alabama.
No civil war veterans
in my direct family, but we were enslaved in Alabama.
So obviously coming out of civil war,
my family sharecroppers come in the areas
of Jim Crow, Great Migration moving throughout the south.
You know, I'm a living part of that stream of history.
And as a professor here at Howard University
and particularly in Africana studies, which is my field
of study in the area I work in, devote a great part of my work
to understanding the implications of the civil
war and reconstruction in terms of contemporary American life.
What's this right here?
[Students] Deed of sale.
[Greg] Deed of sale.
These are reconstruction era documents.
Most people in the country don't know anything about that.
So you can say, oh,
we saw the charter, we saw the deed of sale for the land.
[Director] You know,
you're the only teacher I filmed who's focused on the freed
people's point of view when teaching reconstruction.
How does teaching
from that point of view make a difference for your students?
[Greg] What I hope they will walk out
with a sense of human purpose that they have a stake in.
There's always the threat
of forgetting in terms of national memory.
When you start talking about a settler state like
the United States that came out of a settler colony with many
different people, there's almost a required
forgetting of violence, of forgetting in order to force
a type of unity of culture, the unity of national identity.
So the work that remains to be
done is to recognize our full history.
That story will make you so proud of black people.
Also, break your heart.
(slow music)
- My name is Brother Rogers, I work at the
Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
I created a website
with a picture of every historical marker in the state.
[Director] Have you taken a
picture of the Clinton riots marker?
[Rogers] I have taken a picture of that marker.
I know exactly where it is near the railroad track
in Clinton. [Director] That's right.
And what do you think?
Tell me what you're, tell me
what do you know about that marker?
- Well, I think that the Clinton
riot marker is particularly important because there was
a riot during reconstruction in the town of Clinton.
That was not in the history books that I read growing up
studying Mississippi history and the local public schools.
Reconstruction in America, not just in Mississippi,
is one of the most overlooked and underappreciated historical
eras. And the people who wrote about it
afterwards, North and South wrote about it mainly
from a white supremacy point of view, whether they were in
Ohio and Michigan or Alabama or Mississippi.
There was lots of violence throughout America,
during reconstruction against African-Americans.
It's a terrible time in our history from that perspective.
It's a great time again
of experimentation with providing the rights
of citizenship and political equality to African-Americans.
Unfortunately, through the lens
of white supremacy, that was too much for a lot
of white people to take during that time.
[Director] Are there any other markers
in Mississippi that acknowledge
white violence against African-Americans?
- The only marker of which I am aware that exist,
that depicts and talks about white violence against black
people during reconstruction is the Clinton riot marker.
[Director] In Mississippi? - In Mississippi.
- My name is Missy Jones.
My title is a Visiting
Instructor of History at Mississippi College.
[Director] How long have you been working on the Clinton riot?
- Almost 15 years now
if I think back.
[Director] What is this?
- This is Johnson Milling Company,
it's been here for ages, but right behind it is
the location of the old train depot.
And the thought was that we
would put the marker for the Clinton riot here
because of the importance of the train depot.
The Clinton riots began
on September 4th, 1875, and the diorama behind me
tells a version of those events. The original train depot is
where white paramilitary units flocked into Clinton.
There was a political rally
and it was one of the first times that African-Americans had
gotten together to really listen to political candidates.
And it was organized by the Republican Party.
But there was also a group
of white Democrats who were sent there to disrupt things.
Shots rang out, African-American
families began to flee the scene.
Even one mother left her child
in the hollow of a tree just for protection.
And then over the course of the next several days,
white liner's began to flood into Clinton and then
systematically round up those who organized the rally and then
kill them, sometimes in front of their own family members.
[Director] So this is a group of white
Democrats killing the black Republicans?
[Missy] Correct. It was the plan of the white
Democrats to keep African-Americans from voting.
The violence served as a pretext for the return of white rule
and the end of reconstruction in Mississippi.
[Director] Do you feel like people
know that this marker exists?
- No, I don't.
Just given where it is behind this old mill,
I feel like it has the potential to look hidden.
And that was my fear with placing it here.
I would definitely prefer it to be in a more prominent
location because this event is by far the most important event
that ever took place in the city.
The Clinton riot has always been one of these contested events.
For years and years and years, it's been told
as if it was caused by African-Americans. That they
were going to take back the city, accost the women.
For essentially one hundred and forty years,
the history was told incorrectly and the violence was blamed
on the black members of the Clinton community.
- Hi, my name is James Robinson.
I'm from here in Clinton.
Lifetime residence, except for a few years.
- I'm Deborah.
James is my cousin.
- This picture here, Sara Lee, my grandmother's grandmother.
When she was caught in the proximity of the
Clinton riot in order to save her child.
She hid the child in a tree.
And then after the skirmish was over,
then she went back and and got the child.
As the article says,
old Clinton history told from Tales by Ex Slave.
This was published in the newspaper in 1961.
- As far as the black citizens in Clinton,
you don't hear a lot about our history.
And a lot of times I think our elders have tended to just
discuss things among themselves as opposed
to bringing it to the forefront.
Because it can stir up a lot of emotions.
[Director] And what's the result
of stirring up emotions?
- You get a lot of good and you get some bad.
[Director] What's the bad?
- The fact that somebody could
vandalize if you put up anything.
- I just hope that that doesn't happen in Clinton.
There's still a lot of racist attitudes.
- There are some that and I'm thinking about Missy.
When I first met Missy, she said the first word
that came out of her mouth was nigger.
And her parents were so proud
of her when she said that word because that meant that you
knew you were superior to somebody else.
[Director] You've been so dedicated for so long.
You've dedicated so much care and time and effort to this.
Why do you care about this?
- I'm going to get emotional,
but I grew up in a family in Mississippi.
My dad was from New York, my mom's family was from
South Mississippi. 90 percent white,
10 percent black, still segregated in the ways
in which people in the communities live.
But I was raised in a racist
family, racist community at the time in which I grew up.
Things have changed in a good bit now, but for me, I think
they want to repeat that.
I feel responsibility with a profession that I've
chosen to tell things accurately and to not
repeat generational
umm
incorrectness
with my own family. I want to do something different.
[Student] Why are you passionate about this project?
Just like what drives you with making this documentary?
- You know, I didn't start as passionate.
I started as curious. - Yeah.
- And I had this sense that there was something
missing in the story that I had been taught.
And it's only through
the making of this film that I've really come to see
that that story was totally white.
I used to think that white supremacy means a bunch
of guys in white robes, but it really means not even
recognizing that we're only telling white stories.
(southern instrumental music)
[Dr. Blight] During the reconstruction era,
there's fear all over the place.
White fear of those black
majority populations, if they really vote, was colossal.
So many white Southerners saw
this idea of black people serving on juries,
of black people owning land as an intolerable revolution.
And it necessitated a counter-revolution,
even if it necessitated the use of terror as violence.
A lost cause tradition was
a response to that tremendous fear.
We like to go to bed at night
believing our society is in social order.
I don't have to worry about my child tomorrow being
confronted by totally unusual and repugnant ideas or
totally unusual and repugnant people.
I'm safe by the history I know.
So the lost cause tradition
that Southerners developed, this story
for their explanation of their defeat became ultimately
a victory narrative. Victory over reconstruction.
And they crushed the very idea of slavery as the central
cause and the very idea of emancipation of four
million slaves as the central result of the civil war.
You begin to see wide scale, even official efforts to crush
what we might call black memory.
- If we throw away our
Confederate flag, we throw away the history
of South Carolina and of the United States.
- We are true Southerners, I guess.
To me it's a flag for everybody,
black and white, representing our heritage.
Can understand to some degree
how they would have been upset years ago.
That's been one hundred and thirty years ago now.
To me, it's our flag.
(crowd chanting)
- White only, no blacks!
Send them home!
[News Reporter] Breaking news, a horrific scene
in Charlottesville, Virginia. A white nationalist rally
that descended into deadly violence and chaos.
- Since the city voted to remove the
Robert E. Lee statue,
there have been protests, and now violence.
[Director] Tell me your name. Who are you?
- I'm Stephanie Rolph and I'm an assistant professor
of history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.
The images that we're seeing
on our computers and on our phones and on television,
you can't divorce this from the need to return
to some sort of innocent past.
[Director] Like the old South?
- Yes.
[Director] What is the old South?
- After the Civil War?
The old South myth is this mythologized place of
big plantation houses
with Corinthian columns and mint juleps and hoop skirts
and Southern gentleman and happy slaves.
Everyone is well taken care of.
Some people are owned by other people, but everyone is well
fed, well clothed, loved and appreciated.
And that is not--
this is why something like this would appeal to white
northerners, because that's not
the environment that they lived in.
[Director] It's really a story about the
merits of white supremacy.
You know, I filmed with another
historian who said that it was really white supremacy
that helped the north and the south reunify after the war.
Do you think that's true?
- I fully believe that when we're talking,
even across the spectrum from the coming of the civil
war to the prosecution of it and the aftermath,
I think it's a much more productive approach
to describe and understand white supremacy
than it is to even talk about slavery.
Slavery doesn't survive, but white supremacy does.
The war ends, reconciliation has been
achieved, what happens unexpectedly is
that in that reconciliation, the nation itself embraces
the Confederacy and the memory of the Confederacy.
This is why by the time you get to the 1930's,
people from all over the country are coming
to places like Natchez, Mississippi,
to tour antebellum homes and to see women in
hoop skirts and people dressed up as enslaved persons.
This is a vacation for them.
Can you think of a cultural footprint of this today?
Where the South gets sort of fetishized?
- Grades second through fifth, like we used to go almost
every year to the Destrehan Plantation.
- And what does that tour include?
- It included tours of the plantation.
They also had a little show put on, people dressed up
and stuff, and they sang songs, played music.
It was like a, it's almost like a little party.
- Are the tours in any way engaging enslavement?
- They don't really talk about the slavery part.
You might have a good time because, I used to look
forward to going to the plantation.
It was a big deal.
- I mean, can we even think
about these plantations as spaces of violence?
When we think about things like Confederate monuments or
symbols and flags, all of these remembrances
on white visions, those are renewals of white supremacy.
And in my mind,
keeping that Confederate battle flag in the top left
corner of Mississippi State flag,
is a way to keep that narrative alive.
And it's threatening because
if we lose it, what happens to our memory?
(quiet thoughtful music)
- My name is William Shirley.
I serve in the Mississippi House of Representatives
for District 84, about 16,000 people in the whole county.
Everybody knows everybody.
You get a speeding ticket, everybody knows.
I'm not here to argue the design of the flag.
That is not my intent.
Some universities took the flag down.
If you're receiving state
dollars and you're a public university, then you should
display whatever that symbol is.
[Director] And do you think this is
an issue that matters to the people in your district?
- Yes, ma'am. - Why?
- Well, I just think it's a heritage, it's a history.
There's a big movement to remove Confederate history.
Well, it's part of history.
You know, where and when is enough?
[Director] Do you feel like
slavery was something that was in the past?
Let's move on.
Or do you feel like slavery still has an effect today?
- It's over and it is part of history,
it's part of the past. I don't know of a
person that owns a slave or has been a slave.
To this day.
I think we're going to make it
a major issue as long as we keep rubbing it
in from the standpoint of the minority saying, well,
we were slaves and mistreated. I understand that.
What the hell do you want me to do about it?
I'm sorry.
I wasn't there. I'm 50 years old.
I wasn't there.
[Director] And what do you say to historically black
universities that say, we're not going to fly this flag
because it's a symbol of slavery?
Do you think about their point of view?
- It is. It's a state flag of Mississippi.
[Director] But if they say it actually hurts us,
it deeply offends us,
it represents something that gives us pain.
What do you say to that?
- I don't see the pain in in the symbol.
(chanting and sirens)
- New Orleans is just the latest city
to start taking down historical,
but controversial monuments that many say
celebrates slavery and the Confederacy.
- White supremacy! - Must go!
- When? - Now!
- All right! All right!
We're here to celebrate the taking down
of the Jefferson Davis statue here in New Orleans Center.
These were all Jim Crow era statues meant to emphasize
that white people were in control.
[Director] Is there any value--
- There is no value in keeping those statues.
There is value in remembering
what these statues were put up for.
(people yelling)
- What do you say to the people across the street
who are marching with flags--
- I don't say nothing
to the people across the street who are marching.
They are not on my radar. They are unredeemable
as far as I know.
- We pray, oh Lord, that those who are attacking
our heritage may repent of their sins.
We pray, oh Lord,
that the truth of history would triumph.
[Director] I feel like the country never
really reunified after the war
in a way that included all of its citizens, right?
Like maybe taking down these
statues now could help us reunify.
- But don't try to take away
history just because you don't agree with it.
And if you really study history,
you'll see there's more... It was more than just slavery.
There was taxation issues.
[Director] Hold on. Is he putting on a--
a bulletproof vest?
- Probably. - Why?
- Because they were firing
paintball at these guys the other night.
Sounds harmless,
but who's to say that they don't try something more?
A lot of these people from out of town.
- These are visitors from out of town
who are Confederate supporters, and they come here
to occupy a city for a couple of weeks and stand their
ground and all that good stuff.
[Director] But isn't the goal to have
more people feel represented?
I mean, don't we need to listen to each other?
They said the statue's a source of Southern pride.
- Fuck the south. Fuck Southern pride.
Umm
The source of all of this tension and anger comes
from the erasure of African-Americans, history,
bloodlines, culture, families for hundreds of years
by way of this thing that they're upholding.
Ok, so if you can't balance
that in your mind, then I can't do anything
for your lack of an IQ or common sense.
I'm sorry.
- It's not about race.
This has never been about race.
I feel like we're having our history
stolen from us.
This was our only Confederate president.
He died here.
- You don't need to have that in
our diverse neighborhood.
- How is a inanimate object like a symbol,
affecting you so gravely that you
cannot see a [inaudible].
(crowd starts chanting)
* Get the fuck out of New Orleans *
- I pray for America. I really do.
(crowd cheering)
- Dear God, our Heavenly Father,
we thank you for your
love and your grace and your mercy and please bless us
during the coming hour as we pay homage to our ancestors,
the fifteen thousand two hundred and sixty five souls
that gave their life to defend the great state
of Mississippi. For Christ's sake, Amen.
(all) - Amen,
- Our next speaker is someone that I really
appreciate and he's got backbone.
And that's the kind of people we need, people to stand up.
Mr. William Shirley of Clark County,
would you come say a few words?
Good man! - Yeah!
(clapping)
- Flag means a whole lot to me.
You're not going to take the damn flag down with my vote.
So I'm going to do all I can do.
And I suggest you find your legislator and make your ear
known to him or her, because we all
in the Mississippi house are going to get to vote on them
amendments again and again and again.
And they're going to get tired of seeing me.
And they're going to try
to get somebody to replace people like me that just don't
go along with y'alls boss man.
If you're taking state
dollars, you fly the flag of the state of Mississippi.
(clapping)
Thank y'all.
- I'm gonna let our Mississippi Senator
McDaniel come up and speak.
(clapping)
- Political correctness
is an incredibly dangerous doctrine.
It's anti intellectual.
It's anti decent. It demands conformity.
Do you believe they'll stop with a monument?
Do you believe they'll stop with a pattern
or design on a flag?
They ridicule our traditions.
They mock us, they laugh at us.
You feel like you're losing your country, don't you?
You feel marginalized.
You're scared.
Mississippi has to stand.
We have nothing else to surrender.
We are those warriors,
men and women of the soil, stubborn, courageous.
We stand here on the edge
of history, ready to push back one more time.
Help's not coming from California.
It's not coming from Massachusetts.
It has to be you.
What are you going to do about it?
(dramatic music swells)
- How would you like to see Uncle Billy dance?
(children clapping)
(harmonica music)
(tap dancing)
[Dr. Blight] At the end of the day, historical memory is always
about who is controlling the story.
And you got to do it in a society that has this
horrible problem with racism. The theories of race that most
white Americans, north or south, still share.
(dramatic music)
By the 1890's in the north,
there's a tremendous fear of a world that seems to be
floating into disorder in these teeming new cities
full of these immigrants speaking unusual languages.
Maybe the race question should just be left to the South.
They've always known how to handle the race question
at the same time, there will be over nine
million African-Americans, mostly in the South.
There's no longer the slavery
system that kept this all contained.
White Southerners need to keep
this burgeoning black population on the land as
laborers not engaging in educational advancement.
They need a new system to keep them there.
The solution in the south was a system of Jim Crow laws.
Everything from schooling
to voting to transportation, public accommodation,
every element of life is now going to be segregated.
Lots of white Americans,
North or South, can unify around segregation
as a way to keep society in social order.
The way in which this culture
became within the first half century after the war,
an American North South reunion without racial
justice left a deep set of legacies
we are, of course, still struggling with.
And every time we think we have so much of this put
aside, we suddenly are reminded that we don't.
(crowd yelling)
The only way today we'll see a new, more inclusive reunion
of Americans is if there's a coalition of interest
that stops looking only at their own individual
interest and sees themselves in these four or five issues
and sees themselves in other people.
Ok.
[Director] We're just going to record
the sound of the room a little bit.
And then if you could change the frame too.
There you go.
If I were going to make a movie about you,
what do you want me to make sure that I include?
- I want you to show like
the great things that I'm capable of.
Like,
yeah, I'm if if I do say so myself, I'm a great
football player, but I'm also smart in the classroom.
I try I try to be-- I'm just trying to be great in life.
I'm trying to make something of my life,
trying to be successful.
- To be honest with you, what I've been through.
There are people who just look
at the good things, look at the good things,
but I'd rather you see what the negativity was.
So it's like it counteracts it's like here's the bad.
But now here where I'm at, I'm good now.
I'm in a good zone.
I was in-- you know what I'm saying? It's more like I'd
rather you not just tell half of my story, I'd rather
you tell the whole story.
- There was this one where a teacher once described me as
I think it was sympathetic.
I thought she called me pathetic when she said that.
[Director] It might have an empathetic.
- Empathetic, yeah.
At the end of the day, it's just like
you know, we all have feelings.
We all have like a history that nobody else knows about.
Yeah.
(thoughtful music)
- I was certainly not taught this way in my high school.
(all laugh)
So-- - Neither was I!
- I'm always shocked when I find students of a certain age
who haven't seen Gone with the Wind.
And I point them to it.
You need to watch that film.
[Kelly] It was the most watched movie of all time.
People are eating this stuff up
like there's a real reason why
people have weddings on plantations.
Like you would never, you would
never go to Auschwitz and be like, let's get married.
Like you would never do that.
But we have so made black pain
and suffering like a place of our enjoyment,
a place that feels good to us, a place that feels familiar
to us, that we don't pay attention to the suffering.
We don't pay attention to why it's problematic.
- I know you talked about the force in your
presentation, but how do you define freedom for yourself?
- I have been conditioned
to think of emancipation as an ending point,
so I realized that freedom was not just like liberation.
Freedom was like owning your humanity,
operating in your full humanity,
being recognized for your full humanity.
I think that the spirit of slavery,
that I talked about before, that makes color a mark
of degradation is still very much with us.
And I think for too long, the onus of racism has been
put on people of color to solve when this is not
really like a people of color issue.
This is like a white
supremacist issue where white people need to talk to other
white people about how they can overcome these issues.
White allies today have
to take a very radical stance and that they can't just,
you know, put up the bumper sticker.
Black Lives Matter.
Are you going to allow your
child to be one of the few whites in an all black school?
Are you going to invest in that school making sure
that not just your child, but every child
in that community gets a fair shake? To balance like this
great injustice that's taking place for hundreds of years
it requires sacrifice. I don't know what that will
look like exactly for you or for each person.
It's different. I think the...
(reflective music)
- This is Pleasant Gardens. This is where most
of the African-American in the city were buried.
It was an operation from 1891 through 1970.
Well, one that I saw in the paper, an article about
an abandoned cemetery, and so I thought,
I can't believe that there's a place here that's so rich
with history and I didn't know about it.
And so I use the map on the front of the newspaper
and drove over to the cemetery and found this beautiful place
and immediately felt the need to organize some community
cleanups to bring attention to it.
Many of the African-Americans
that are buried here were not slaves, and so they could be
buried and recognized in different ways.
But there's a very interesting cemetery called
Beck Knob Cemetery
that's located on the north side of the town.
And it was a slave cemetery.
And when you look at how overgrown it is,
it's almost sad that
you can almost drive past it and not even know it.
[Director] Would you take us there?
- Yeah, I could take you there,
but I don't know how much
you'll be able to see because it's really overgrown.
(truck engine roaring)
Wow.
(truck engines)
I knew I wasn't crazy.
Look how close this line is to that.
(peaceful music)
[Director] What has been the most
important story that you've
talked about in history class so far this year?
- Well, slavery was bad.
We should still feel guilty
because it's something that happened.
[Director] But we interviewed a kid
from Estonia and he has white
skin and his family wasn't even here.
Should he feel guilty about it?
- Well, if he's living in our country now,
then I think he should feel a little guilt because
it's still part of his, it's still part
of his history, because now he's part of our
country and he should feel a little guilt,
I think.
[Director] Is guilt useful?
- Yes. - Tell me why.
- Because it helps us understand that
what we did was wrong
and we shouldn't go back to doing it and we should
fix our ways so we can do better in the future.
- I personally, like, slavery is morally wrong.
Like you just shouldn't own other people.
That's not something that should happen.
But I see the reasoning
behind it and I can understand it and not accept it,
but I guess,
see, like, behind it, I guess.
[Director] I think a lot depends on whose
eyes you're looking through. Right?
Are we talking about a white point of view
or a black point of view?
A lot depends on who you are, I think.
- I want to know, like, what was your perspective
of the whole slavery situation and how you
feel like, because you you know, you being, you were
raised, like how do you feel when people--
[Director] I feel like it was wrong.
I feel like it was deeply wrong.
But I also feel like
I never learned about slavery as a white story.
I mean, most people around me, we never talk about slavery as
something white people did and benefited from, you know?
It was always just presented
as something that just happened.
[Dr. Blight] I want to introduce Ibram Kendi.
Ibram, you argue that the current
threat of racism is more
insidious now than it has been in the past.
[Ibram] Precisely.
Just as Lincoln said
that the nation will either become
all one or all the other,
meaning slavery or antislavery.
I think it's the same thing for racism and anti-racism.
If we see America's history of steady racial progress
that we have now reached the mountaintop,
racism is no longer critical and important.
We're also saying the cause of racial inequities today
is not racism, because we've moved beyond racism.
It's the inferiority
of particular people that are not working hard enough.
(introspective music)
There was a racist idea that is still very prominent
within the community of people who consider themselves
liberal, even progressive or even radical.
The oppression inferiority thesis.
First, it was slavery making black people into brutes.
Right now, it's poverty.
This idea that racism itself
or discrimination wasn't just sort of harming
people, but it was literally leading to inferior behaviors.
(introspective music)
[Director] When you walk down the street
and people see you,
what do you want people to think about you?
Do you think about that ever?
- I want them to think that I'm
an intelligent girl and I'm not bad.
I'm actually very good and I'm smart.
[Director] What makes you a very good?
- That I follow directions.
Well, sometimes.
[Director] What else?
- Um, I want them to think that I'm not ugly.
(quiet music)
[Director] It seems to me that one
of the major challenges
for you was a history teacher would be teaching in a way
that connects with such a diverse student body.
- Yes. Yeah, it is.
[Director] Boston Latin is kind of like
the nation in miniature
because it is so old
and it did start as
a segregated all male institution.
- Yeah, it's the oldest school
in the country. Was founded in 1635 by
a portion of the population of Boston, England.
It was all male, was all white.
It was all people of privilege.
[Director] You know, I've really come
to believe that part of the purpose of history is
to tell a story that unites us.
- Yeah. - But in order
for that story to work, we have to see ourselves as
being in the same boat to begin with.
- Yeah.
- We have to see ourselves as connected to other people.
- I really agree.
[Director] So in your class today,
how do you tell a story
that helps these kids see themselves as connected to all
the diverse people that surround them?
- Well, it's important to talk about race and the history.
And I want kids to understand
that where we are today has its roots in the past.
But it's really hard to convey the full scope of the way
the history of this country plays out today.
And I think it's really difficult to talk about race.
How do you actually help kids
to be different than us, our generation,
who doesn't really know how to do this very well?
How do you, the only way you do
that is by having them do it.
Ok, I want to know what went
into place after reconstruction.
Look at integration
of schools, fair treatment by juries.
Those are the kinds of things.
How are we doing now? We'll put the school
segregation folks in that corner.
We'll put the jury selection folks in the back corner
- With the black voting race, I found that the 15th
Amendment, it gave African-American males
the right to vote, but they kept finding
loopholes to keep them from voting.
And today, 13 percent are
prohibited from voting because they have served in prison.
- Yeah? - Ok, umm
well, I guess I'll say I guess
I think we're running out of time, but I, I just think
talking about this is really not helpful because
I mean, what it does is-- (school bell rings)
- Sit still. - It puts people in an
unproductive mindset, because what it does
is it makes white people feel guilty and it makes black
people feel like victims. - Don't go anywhere.
And I want to know
what people want to say back to that, because I think it's
important that you have a chance to say something.
So I'm going to go with Andriana first.
- Like, if you're treated
differently because of something you can't change,
why wouldn't you be a victim?
Like you don't have to talk
about something to feel a certain way.
[Student] Have you? - Yes.
- So I see all these hands and we had a bell.
And I'm so sorry that we're
going to have to stop this, but we will pick this up.
Look right where you are. See your hands in the air?
Put your hands in the air.
This is where we start tomorrow.
[Director] How did you feel about the
conversation in Section 41 today?
(gasps)
(nervous laughter)
- Terrified.
- The idea I wanted to dismantle
is that there's like a system
in a place
like
that like
benefits white people
and like has a negative effect on black people.
- I don't want to squash this child.
He's, you know,
bringing sincere, you know, and rigourous.
He's I think the word he used was
logic.
He's thinking about it logically.
And logic says that there's got to be a reason for that.
But he doesn't have an answer when I say, you know,
so what might be the reason if you think it's not systemic
racism that has caused this, what what is the reason?
And he says, I don't know.
- You shouldn't have something to blame your problems on.
And I don't think that's--
I don't think that's a good thing.
Asian-Americans here,
they have a hard time, but they still succeed.
- That's going to be continued tomorrow.
And I've got to spend my time
thinking tonight, what am I going to say
that respects how hard this kid is thinking
about these things, which is exactly what I want
him to do and still push back a little bit and say,
you know, so I think you're missing some of the picture
here in a really important way.
I gave you this document about the Jim Crow era,
which was written by Michelle Alexander in her book.
So as you're reading through that, I want you thinking,
how did they recreate a lower class based on race
after reconstruction?
- Black people in prison, they auctioned off
the prisoners to the highest bidder.
- There was a loophole about slavery in the 13th Amendment.
Did anyone catch that?
- They outlawed slavery,
but it was fit as a punishment for a crime.
- What she's trying to say is that the criminal justice
system, it's literally like the same thing as Jim Crow,
which is her point.
[Instructor] I think you would say a new iteration of it.
That's what we're really trying to look at,
is the ways that that is still with us.
- That's assuming Jim Crow has a--
[Instructor] A presence today?
- Yeah, that's your assumption. - It is.
- That's not that's not my assumption.
Asian-Americans are routinely
discriminated against when applying for colleges.
They have to get about like
400 SAT points higher than black people.
And also they're discriminated
against when they're applying for jobs.
(school bell rings) Your mind is so closed off
to certain ideas. (students laugh)
- We'll continue.
We will continue.
I love that you hang in there.
- They're not willing to consider certain ideas
because they've been taught to
[crosstalk]
- Yeah, but is the certain idea that you're really
suggesting that Asians are better than black people?
That's not what you're really saying, is it?
- I mean,
I'm not saying they're like inherently better.
I'm just saying their situation is better right now.
- But what would you attribute that to?
- Higher income, higher representation
in colleges and in uhh--
- But why do you think they have that?
And why do you think black people don't?
- I don't know, I mean, Asians are discriminated much
more in those areas because--
- Than black people? - Yes.
- We'll agree to disagree on that point,
but we'll come back to it, Ok?
- Ok. - All right.
- Well, I hope you, I hope you look into that.
- I will look into it. Good.
Thank you.
It's a revelation to me that presenting,
no matter how much information you present, sometimes
people are going to hear it the way they want to hear it
and they're not going to budge, at least not yet.
He's not.
But that's exactly what you're in for when you open the door
to having these kinds of conversations.
That's what's hard to navigate.
(quiet music)
- We're celebrating Confederate Heroes Day,
it's a Texas state holiday
celebrated on the 19th of January every year,
which is also Robert E. Lee's birthday.
- The bill was filed by a representative from Pensacola.
It says that a memorial can't
be moved unless it needs to be refurbished.
- This monument right here
outside the old courthouse in downtown Pittsboro was
given to the county by the
Daughters of the Confederacy back in the early 1900's.
- I'm in favor of the statues staying.
A lot of ancestors of mine had fought and died.
And they didn't die for slavery.
They had no slaves.
(applause)
(crowd chanting and yelling)
[Crowd] Pull! Pull!
(crowd yelling and cheering)
(applause)
- Story starts with seeing the monuments,
but it's also about being in this black body.
What does that feel like to have your country,
your nation say this is what we stand by?
No. We want more, we demand more.
We say yes to something that looks like us.
We say yes to inclusivity.
We say yes to broader notions
of what it means to be an American.
(dramatic music)