1 00:00:06,006 --> 00:00:07,466 -[chatter] -[helicopter whirs] 2 00:00:07,549 --> 00:00:10,259 -[sirens blare] -[horns beep] 3 00:00:10,885 --> 00:00:14,305 [woman] Most of how we think about ourselves as Americans, 4 00:00:16,099 --> 00:00:18,019 most of what we're proudest of, 5 00:00:18,685 --> 00:00:24,185 and most of the ways in which we believe we are free 6 00:00:24,274 --> 00:00:26,364 are embedded in the 14th Amendment. 7 00:00:26,443 --> 00:00:27,863 [upbeat music] 8 00:00:28,570 --> 00:00:31,110 [man 1] The 14th Amendment was born in battle, 9 00:00:31,698 --> 00:00:36,078 forged in controversy and ratified amid rancor. 10 00:00:36,745 --> 00:00:37,905 That's the heritage. 11 00:00:38,705 --> 00:00:42,455 [man 2] What we didn't account for is how unprepared we were 12 00:00:42,542 --> 00:00:44,502 to actually embrace true equality. 13 00:00:47,714 --> 00:00:52,054 [contemporary orchestral music] 14 00:00:59,184 --> 00:01:03,314 Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 15 00:01:04,147 --> 00:01:08,937 And every revolution has an equal and opposite counter-revolution. 16 00:01:10,153 --> 00:01:13,533 Most people have a really hard time with change, 17 00:01:13,615 --> 00:01:16,275 especially when they feel like they're losing something. 18 00:01:16,910 --> 00:01:19,540 After the Civil War, most white Southerners 19 00:01:19,621 --> 00:01:23,961 feel like they've not only lost a war, but they've lost their way of life. 20 00:01:24,501 --> 00:01:25,921 They've been humiliated. 21 00:01:27,087 --> 00:01:30,507 Former slaves have now gained legal equality 22 00:01:30,590 --> 00:01:32,050 under the 14th Amendment. 23 00:01:32,550 --> 00:01:35,350 Equality backed by the government. 24 00:01:36,513 --> 00:01:38,263 And, as it turns out, 25 00:01:38,348 --> 00:01:41,098 Fourteen needs defending 26 00:01:41,184 --> 00:01:45,024 because as soon as it's passed, it meets resistance on all sides. 27 00:01:45,105 --> 00:01:47,355 In the courts, in the streets… 28 00:01:47,899 --> 00:01:51,439 Its significance is even distorted in our memories. 29 00:01:57,826 --> 00:01:59,366 [chatter] 30 00:01:59,452 --> 00:02:02,662 [clamor grows] 31 00:02:02,747 --> 00:02:06,497 [shouting] 32 00:02:14,300 --> 00:02:16,850 How do you put a republic back together 33 00:02:16,928 --> 00:02:21,058 after an all-out four-year civil war? 34 00:02:21,141 --> 00:02:22,231 [artillery fire] 35 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:30,690 The effort to bring the Southern states back into the Union 36 00:02:30,775 --> 00:02:34,735 on the basis of genuine equality between Black and white 37 00:02:35,446 --> 00:02:38,576 was always a very difficult project. 38 00:02:41,369 --> 00:02:44,159 Slavery was a total institution. 39 00:02:44,706 --> 00:02:47,876 It was a system of labor. It was a system of politics. 40 00:02:47,959 --> 00:02:52,049 It was a system of wealth. It was a system of power. 41 00:02:52,130 --> 00:02:54,470 You needed to revamp all of that. 42 00:02:56,384 --> 00:02:59,104 Most Southern whites did not want the 14th Amendment, 43 00:02:59,179 --> 00:03:00,759 they felt it was a humiliation, 44 00:03:01,514 --> 00:03:05,774 particularly in the day-to-day interactions of people. 45 00:03:05,852 --> 00:03:09,232 Everybody knew how a slave was supposed to act. 46 00:03:09,314 --> 00:03:12,864 They were meant to step off the sidewalk if a white person came by. 47 00:03:13,359 --> 00:03:17,069 They could not address a white person, except as Master this, Master that. 48 00:03:17,739 --> 00:03:20,449 But what is the behavior after slavery? 49 00:03:21,159 --> 00:03:25,039 [man] "You must not think because you are as free as white people 50 00:03:25,121 --> 00:03:27,371 you are their equal, because you are not." 51 00:03:27,957 --> 00:03:30,497 "If you wish to be esteemed as ladies and gentlemen, 52 00:03:30,585 --> 00:03:32,745 you must conduct yourselves accordingly." 53 00:03:33,338 --> 00:03:37,298 "Call your old master 'Master' and your old mistress 'Mistress.'" 54 00:03:41,012 --> 00:03:44,932 [man] One of the things I don't think we've ever talked about in this country 55 00:03:45,016 --> 00:03:48,556 is how remarkable it is, the kind of mindset 56 00:03:48,645 --> 00:03:52,145 that emancipated Black people showed during Reconstruction 57 00:03:52,232 --> 00:03:55,942 is one of the most inspiring things you can find in American history. 58 00:03:56,027 --> 00:04:00,817 Here are people enslaved and brutalized, and traumatized and tortured… 59 00:04:00,907 --> 00:04:01,907 [whip cracks] 60 00:04:03,159 --> 00:04:08,119 Win their freedom and they seek peace, and harmony and community. 61 00:04:09,874 --> 00:04:12,424 [man] "They bear towards their former masters 62 00:04:12,502 --> 00:04:14,172 no revengeful thoughts, 63 00:04:14,254 --> 00:04:15,924 no hatreds, 64 00:04:16,005 --> 00:04:17,415 no animosities." 65 00:04:18,424 --> 00:04:21,224 "They aim not to elevate themselves 66 00:04:21,302 --> 00:04:27,432 by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow citizens." 67 00:04:28,142 --> 00:04:33,192 "They ask but the rights which are theirs by God's universal law." 68 00:04:35,900 --> 00:04:39,400 Many of us aren't aware of the magnitude 69 00:04:39,487 --> 00:04:42,777 of Black American and African contribution 70 00:04:42,865 --> 00:04:44,985 to America and the world. 71 00:04:45,076 --> 00:04:49,786 Join us in a joyous celebration of Black cultural contribution. 72 00:04:49,872 --> 00:04:52,172 ["Freedom" by Pharrell Williams playing] 73 00:04:56,754 --> 00:05:00,174 [Stevenson] With the 14th Amendment, we saw remarkable progress 74 00:05:00,258 --> 00:05:01,928 by emancipated Black people. 75 00:05:02,010 --> 00:05:06,010 With the presence of federal troops, they became successful 76 00:05:06,597 --> 00:05:09,597 at commerce, at business, at agriculture. 77 00:05:09,684 --> 00:05:12,234 They wanted to serve and lead. 78 00:05:13,521 --> 00:05:14,731 ♪ Man's red flower ♪ 79 00:05:15,606 --> 00:05:17,316 ♪ It's in every living thing ♪ 80 00:05:18,568 --> 00:05:19,818 ♪ Mind, use your power ♪ 81 00:05:20,778 --> 00:05:22,488 ♪ Spirit, use your wings ♪ 82 00:05:23,239 --> 00:05:24,739 [man] "Our eyes behold it, 83 00:05:24,824 --> 00:05:27,914 our ears hear it, our hearts feel it, there's no doubt about it." 84 00:05:28,494 --> 00:05:30,004 "The Black man is free." 85 00:05:30,079 --> 00:05:33,419 "The Black man is a citizen and the Black man is enfranchised." 86 00:05:33,499 --> 00:05:38,419 African Americans are filled with this excitement about freedom, 87 00:05:38,504 --> 00:05:42,054 filled with this excitement about what it means to be full citizens. 88 00:05:42,133 --> 00:05:45,763 And we begin to have this transformation in Black life. 89 00:05:45,845 --> 00:05:49,635 They also wanted to establish institutions, like churches. 90 00:05:49,724 --> 00:05:54,404 The AME Church and Black Baptist Churches proliferate across the South. 91 00:05:54,896 --> 00:05:58,436 So many of the historically Black colleges and universities, 92 00:05:58,524 --> 00:06:01,694 from Fisk to Howard University in Washington DC, 93 00:06:01,778 --> 00:06:03,818 were born in this moment 94 00:06:03,905 --> 00:06:08,615 as a way for Black people to have the institutional basis 95 00:06:08,701 --> 00:06:12,961 for making a new life for themselves in a world that they had never known. 96 00:06:14,123 --> 00:06:15,463 ♪ Freedom! ♪ 97 00:06:16,626 --> 00:06:17,956 ♪ Freedom! ♪ 98 00:06:19,128 --> 00:06:20,338 ♪ Freedom! ♪ 99 00:06:21,381 --> 00:06:22,841 ♪ Freedom ♪ 100 00:06:22,924 --> 00:06:26,934 Reconstruction brought about hundreds of Black officeholders, 101 00:06:27,011 --> 00:06:30,011 whether they were state legislators in the South, 102 00:06:30,098 --> 00:06:31,848 Lieutenant governors in the South. 103 00:06:31,933 --> 00:06:35,443 A few became US Congressmen and two became US senators 104 00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:36,770 and served nobly. 105 00:06:37,313 --> 00:06:41,613 Hiram Revels became the first African American senator. 106 00:06:42,110 --> 00:06:45,280 "Washington, February 25th, 1870." 107 00:06:45,363 --> 00:06:47,703 "Mr. Revels, the Colored senator from Mississippi 108 00:06:47,782 --> 00:06:50,372 was sworn in and admitted to his seat this afternoon." 109 00:06:50,868 --> 00:06:54,248 "There was not an inch of standing or sitting room in the galleries, 110 00:06:54,330 --> 00:06:58,460 and to say that the interest was intense gives but a faint idea of the feeling 111 00:06:58,543 --> 00:07:01,173 which prevailed throughout the entire proceeding." 112 00:07:01,254 --> 00:07:04,594 [as Revels] "We are in the midst of an exciting campus 113 00:07:05,174 --> 00:07:10,514 on the basis of justice and political and legal equality." 114 00:07:12,640 --> 00:07:16,100 [distorted music] 115 00:07:16,185 --> 00:07:17,145 I get it, 116 00:07:17,645 --> 00:07:20,225 but now that we're living so close together, 117 00:07:20,314 --> 00:07:23,654 we can get used to each other's ways and work together peacefully. 118 00:07:24,152 --> 00:07:26,612 [cheering] 119 00:07:31,659 --> 00:07:35,789 The famous illustrator Thomas Nast created a cartoon, 120 00:07:35,872 --> 00:07:37,372 "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving." 121 00:07:38,624 --> 00:07:41,594 It was sort of an example of the thinking at that time. 122 00:07:42,086 --> 00:07:46,876 ["93 'Til Infinity" by Souls Of Mischief playing] 123 00:07:49,510 --> 00:07:54,350 [Foner] Everybody is at this table. White, Black, Native American, Chinese… 124 00:07:56,350 --> 00:07:59,850 At that time, I think that was a visual that people have never seen. 125 00:07:59,937 --> 00:08:03,727 This was what they were trying to imagine themselves into. 126 00:08:04,317 --> 00:08:07,567 [Muhammad] The 14th Amendment brought into life 127 00:08:07,653 --> 00:08:11,123 what could be a new multiracial nation, 128 00:08:11,199 --> 00:08:15,699 a multiracial democracy that finally lived up to its inherent principles 129 00:08:15,786 --> 00:08:17,706 enshrined in the Declaration. 130 00:08:23,127 --> 00:08:24,627 And it didn't last long. 131 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:31,550 [atmospheric music playing] 132 00:08:36,057 --> 00:08:38,017 [Epps] The one thing that's clear 133 00:08:38,100 --> 00:08:41,520 is that there were forces in the white South… 134 00:08:43,231 --> 00:08:44,821 that were determined 135 00:08:46,484 --> 00:08:49,784 to get things back the way they had been. 136 00:08:54,659 --> 00:08:58,909 [man] "Darkness is the fashionable color in these regions." 137 00:08:59,622 --> 00:09:02,882 "We have Africans in place all about us." 138 00:09:03,543 --> 00:09:04,673 "They are jurors, 139 00:09:05,670 --> 00:09:08,970 post office clerks, custom-house officers." 140 00:09:10,633 --> 00:09:12,933 "The Southern communities will be a desolation 141 00:09:13,010 --> 00:09:14,930 until there is a thorough change of affairs 142 00:09:15,012 --> 00:09:16,892 in all departments of government." 143 00:09:17,390 --> 00:09:19,980 "Even insurrection would be better 144 00:09:20,726 --> 00:09:23,396 than the insensibility that seems to prevail." 145 00:09:24,730 --> 00:09:28,860 [narrator] The 14th says everyone is equal under the law. 146 00:09:29,860 --> 00:09:31,820 Then comes the 15th Amendment, 147 00:09:31,904 --> 00:09:34,414 which gives Black men the right to vote. 148 00:09:35,324 --> 00:09:39,704 For some in the white South, together that's a dangerous cocktail. 149 00:09:40,538 --> 00:09:43,208 Those two amendments change Southern law, 150 00:09:43,291 --> 00:09:45,881 and, for a time, Southern leadership. 151 00:09:46,752 --> 00:09:50,262 But many white Southern minds haven't changed at all, 152 00:09:51,048 --> 00:09:53,928 and they'll do anything to take back their power. 153 00:09:55,553 --> 00:09:56,393 Anything. 154 00:09:56,470 --> 00:10:02,480 -[shouting] -[gunshots] 155 00:10:04,437 --> 00:10:07,057 [man] We want to live in peace with all mankind, 156 00:10:07,148 --> 00:10:09,318 and especially with the whites of the South. 157 00:10:09,859 --> 00:10:11,439 Our interests are identical. 158 00:10:12,153 --> 00:10:15,703 But we do not want the peace of the lamb with the lion. 159 00:10:16,198 --> 00:10:17,408 Give us our rights. 160 00:10:20,036 --> 00:10:22,996 [Ifill] White Southerners marginalized Black people 161 00:10:23,080 --> 00:10:25,000 to a second-class citizenship, 162 00:10:25,499 --> 00:10:28,039 living subservient lives and, in much of the South, 163 00:10:28,127 --> 00:10:30,587 living almost as they did as slaves. 164 00:10:33,424 --> 00:10:34,764 And after the holocaust 165 00:10:36,052 --> 00:10:37,352 there was a freedom. 166 00:10:38,054 --> 00:10:39,394 On paper, at least. 167 00:10:39,930 --> 00:10:41,930 Technically, slavery had ended 168 00:10:42,600 --> 00:10:45,900 but the struggle for equality was just beginning. 169 00:10:46,854 --> 00:10:48,114 [narrator] As citizens, 170 00:10:48,189 --> 00:10:50,859 guaranteed their rights under the 14th Amendment, 171 00:10:50,941 --> 00:10:55,151 Black Americans now turn to the courts for help against this resistance. 172 00:10:55,863 --> 00:10:59,703 Before the Civil War, most of our justices owned enslaved people 173 00:10:59,784 --> 00:11:02,294 or were appointed by presidents who did. 174 00:11:02,787 --> 00:11:05,747 It kind of took all the surprise out of their rulings. 175 00:11:05,831 --> 00:11:09,751 But the Court in the 1870s and 1880s, it's different. 176 00:11:10,294 --> 00:11:13,384 It's like, been-through-a-civil-war kind of different. 177 00:11:14,006 --> 00:11:17,966 Many of these justices were appointed by presidents who fought for the Union. 178 00:11:18,552 --> 00:11:21,852 This court should be full of revolutionaries, right? 179 00:11:22,848 --> 00:11:24,558 Hmm, not so much. 180 00:11:25,226 --> 00:11:28,146 Black Americans don't find an ally in the courts, 181 00:11:28,938 --> 00:11:30,558 but white Southerners do. 182 00:11:31,357 --> 00:11:35,027 I think when many people think about the backlash to Reconstruction, 183 00:11:35,111 --> 00:11:39,201 we think of the violence on the ground, we think about the rise of the Klan. 184 00:11:39,699 --> 00:11:41,239 We think about Black Codes. 185 00:11:41,325 --> 00:11:43,825 But we also have to be clear that the Supreme Court 186 00:11:43,911 --> 00:11:46,961 plays a vitally important and powerful role 187 00:11:47,540 --> 00:11:52,500 in returning African people to a state, essentially, of servitude. 188 00:11:57,133 --> 00:11:59,723 [Epps] The 14th Amendment, Section 1, says, 189 00:11:59,802 --> 00:12:03,102 as a citizen you have the privileges or immunities of citizenship. 190 00:12:03,180 --> 00:12:05,560 No state shall compromise those. 191 00:12:05,641 --> 00:12:07,181 As a human being, 192 00:12:07,268 --> 00:12:11,018 you have the right to equal protection of the laws and due process. 193 00:12:11,605 --> 00:12:14,475 Well, are those gonna be observed? 194 00:12:14,984 --> 00:12:18,324 What the Supreme Court did in a series of cases, 195 00:12:18,404 --> 00:12:22,664 Slaughterhouse and Cruikshank and Civil Rights Cases, 196 00:12:22,742 --> 00:12:25,372 was undermine that commitment. 197 00:12:28,831 --> 00:12:30,921 [Epps] Slaughterhouse is one of the most… 198 00:12:32,168 --> 00:12:35,628 reviled and criticized decisions of the United States Supreme Court. 199 00:12:35,713 --> 00:12:38,513 Basically, it said you still look to the states, 200 00:12:38,591 --> 00:12:40,221 not the national government, 201 00:12:40,301 --> 00:12:43,051 for the basic definition and protection of your rights. 202 00:12:43,137 --> 00:12:46,557 This emasculated the Privileges and Immunities Clause, 203 00:12:46,640 --> 00:12:48,060 and it never has recovered. 204 00:12:48,642 --> 00:12:51,982 Okay, let's break down privileges and immunities. 205 00:12:52,062 --> 00:12:55,112 It basically means our rights. 206 00:12:55,191 --> 00:12:57,901 The privileges are our freedoms. 207 00:12:57,985 --> 00:12:59,945 That's the things we're allowed to do. 208 00:13:00,029 --> 00:13:02,869 And immunities are our protections, 209 00:13:02,948 --> 00:13:06,488 the things that we'll be protected from as citizens. 210 00:13:06,577 --> 00:13:10,917 And in America, our most basic freedoms and protections 211 00:13:10,998 --> 00:13:13,038 are contained in the Bill of Rights. 212 00:13:13,876 --> 00:13:18,006 Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, right to bear arms, 213 00:13:18,088 --> 00:13:19,758 all of that good stuff. 214 00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:23,840 Now, Fourteen makes it so that you get those rights 215 00:13:23,928 --> 00:13:26,218 no matter which state you live in 216 00:13:26,305 --> 00:13:28,175 or which state you travel to, 217 00:13:28,682 --> 00:13:31,312 and that's really important to Black Americans, 218 00:13:31,393 --> 00:13:34,313 who too often have been deprived of their rights 219 00:13:34,396 --> 00:13:36,516 depending on the state they're in. 220 00:13:37,066 --> 00:13:42,236 By restricting the enforcement of the 14th Amendment so narrowly, 221 00:13:42,321 --> 00:13:43,991 it essentially gutted the amendment. 222 00:13:44,073 --> 00:13:49,123 [Epps] Local white supremacist governments would then use the Slaughterhouse case 223 00:13:49,203 --> 00:13:52,963 to say the 14th Amendment can't interfere 224 00:13:53,582 --> 00:13:56,962 with our local government by guaranteeing civil rights. 225 00:14:05,553 --> 00:14:08,893 [Muhammad] In the United States versus Cruikshank, the courts ruled 226 00:14:08,973 --> 00:14:11,643 that the 14th Amendment 227 00:14:12,268 --> 00:14:18,568 did not protect individual citizens 228 00:14:18,649 --> 00:14:22,819 from violence committed by private citizens. 229 00:14:23,571 --> 00:14:25,781 [man] "The 14th Amendment prohibits a state 230 00:14:25,865 --> 00:14:30,655 from depriving any person life, liberty or property without due process of law, 231 00:14:31,287 --> 00:14:35,497 but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen against another." 232 00:14:36,917 --> 00:14:40,957 That fundamentally ripped the guts 233 00:14:41,046 --> 00:14:45,506 out of the 14th Amendment's most basic guarantee 234 00:14:45,593 --> 00:14:47,603 that the only way Black people 235 00:14:47,678 --> 00:14:50,428 could have citizenship rights in the United States of America 236 00:14:50,514 --> 00:14:53,734 was if they could be protected from violence. 237 00:14:53,809 --> 00:14:55,729 So, let me get this straight. Uh… 238 00:14:55,811 --> 00:14:59,731 Basically, what the Supreme Court is saying is, 239 00:14:59,815 --> 00:15:01,605 "Sorry, Black Americans." 240 00:15:01,692 --> 00:15:05,652 "If private citizens commit violence against you, 241 00:15:05,738 --> 00:15:06,818 even murder, 242 00:15:06,906 --> 00:15:10,526 the federal government can't really do anything about it, 243 00:15:11,327 --> 00:15:15,157 even though the 14th Amendment was written to protect you." 244 00:15:20,085 --> 00:15:23,045 [Ifill] The Civil Rights Cases essentially remove the power 245 00:15:23,130 --> 00:15:25,720 from the Civil Rights Act of 1875. 246 00:15:25,799 --> 00:15:29,009 The Court essentially say that Black people can't be free 247 00:15:29,094 --> 00:15:31,644 from discrimination in public accommodations. 248 00:15:31,722 --> 00:15:35,772 They can't be free from discrimination in theaters and hotels and so forth. 249 00:15:35,851 --> 00:15:39,481 It applied to private action, not state action. 250 00:15:39,563 --> 00:15:42,823 When an opera house says, "We don't let Black people in here," 251 00:15:42,900 --> 00:15:46,110 that's not the state government or a public official doing it. 252 00:15:46,195 --> 00:15:47,655 That's a private business. 253 00:15:49,031 --> 00:15:52,161 The Civil Rights Cases legalize segregation 254 00:15:52,242 --> 00:15:53,912 in private accommodations, 255 00:15:53,994 --> 00:15:57,674 saying it's not a violation of equal protection under Fourteen. 256 00:15:58,624 --> 00:16:01,174 It's just a violation of human decency. 257 00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:06,420 The Court says something in the Civil Rights Cases that's devastating, 258 00:16:06,507 --> 00:16:09,887 that is actually quite familiar to Black people. 259 00:16:12,012 --> 00:16:14,522 "When a man has emerged from slavery 260 00:16:14,598 --> 00:16:17,938 there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation 261 00:16:18,018 --> 00:16:21,478 when he ceases to be the special favorite of the laws." 262 00:16:22,106 --> 00:16:27,566 The Court says, "How long must we continue to, 263 00:16:27,653 --> 00:16:29,533 essentially, coddle Black people?" 264 00:16:29,613 --> 00:16:34,703 There must come a time when, freed from the shackles of slavery, 265 00:16:34,785 --> 00:16:37,035 Black people will stand up on their own two feet. 266 00:16:38,372 --> 00:16:40,502 [Epps] The Court became impatient. 267 00:16:40,582 --> 00:16:43,422 "We fought a war and you guys are now free. 268 00:16:43,502 --> 00:16:45,342 What more do you want from us?" 269 00:16:46,338 --> 00:16:48,258 "We've got other things to do." 270 00:16:48,757 --> 00:16:50,877 You know, "Please, just fall in line." 271 00:16:51,385 --> 00:16:56,015 [Ifill] This is 20 years after Black people have been held in servitude 272 00:16:56,098 --> 00:16:57,888 for centuries in this country. 273 00:16:58,684 --> 00:17:02,154 The Supreme Court is already washing its hands 274 00:17:02,229 --> 00:17:03,769 of the project of equality. 275 00:17:15,242 --> 00:17:17,832 Much quicker than anyone would have thought, 276 00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:24,330 the Northern public lost interest in the project of reform of the South, 277 00:17:24,418 --> 00:17:28,208 and this appetite occurred, which was, 278 00:17:28,297 --> 00:17:29,967 "Let's put this behind us." 279 00:17:30,049 --> 00:17:34,929 "Let's not be divided as a country between North and South the rest of history." 280 00:17:35,929 --> 00:17:38,969 And there was this appetite for what was called reconciliation. 281 00:17:43,145 --> 00:17:45,685 [Muhammad] That was the end of federal presence in the South. 282 00:17:45,773 --> 00:17:48,823 It was the end of the commitment to the 14th Amendment, 283 00:17:48,901 --> 00:17:52,781 and it would create a long, dark and torturous road 284 00:17:52,863 --> 00:17:56,083 to what would become Jim Crow segregation. 285 00:17:56,158 --> 00:17:58,738 [shouting] 286 00:17:59,870 --> 00:18:02,660 [clamor grows] 287 00:18:02,748 --> 00:18:03,748 [gavel bangs] 288 00:18:04,792 --> 00:18:06,252 [screaming] 289 00:18:11,924 --> 00:18:14,344 [Ifill] And then, of course, in 1896, 290 00:18:14,426 --> 00:18:17,136 the Supreme Court decides Plessy versus Ferguson… 291 00:18:19,765 --> 00:18:24,845 …in which the Court upholds state laws that provide for segregation 292 00:18:24,937 --> 00:18:27,767 so long as they are separate but equal. 293 00:18:32,152 --> 00:18:33,742 In Plessy versus Ferguson, 294 00:18:33,821 --> 00:18:35,951 the Supreme Court upholds the Louisiana law 295 00:18:36,031 --> 00:18:38,871 stating all railway companies carrying passengers 296 00:18:38,951 --> 00:18:40,371 in their coaches in this state 297 00:18:40,452 --> 00:18:42,962 shall provide equal but separate accommodations 298 00:18:43,038 --> 00:18:44,788 for the white and Colored races. 299 00:18:44,873 --> 00:18:46,923 See, that's where we get "separate but equal." 300 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:49,750 No, it doesn't mean you can blame segregation on trains, 301 00:18:49,837 --> 00:18:51,297 as much as I'd like to. 302 00:18:51,380 --> 00:18:55,430 The Supreme Court has essentially replaced 14 with white supremacy 303 00:18:55,509 --> 00:18:56,679 as the law of the land. 304 00:18:56,760 --> 00:18:58,260 Let's examine this new law. 305 00:18:58,345 --> 00:19:00,305 What does "separate" really do? 306 00:19:01,598 --> 00:19:04,518 Well, "separate" means to force apart, to divide. 307 00:19:04,601 --> 00:19:06,521 It's an inherently destructive verb. 308 00:19:06,603 --> 00:19:09,193 I dislike the phrase "separate the wheat from the chaff." 309 00:19:09,273 --> 00:19:11,733 Why are you so mad at the chaff? What'd it do to you? 310 00:19:11,817 --> 00:19:13,357 Look at separate's history. 311 00:19:13,443 --> 00:19:17,453 First, Africans were separated from their continent by the slave trade, 312 00:19:17,531 --> 00:19:21,201 then African Americans were separated from their families through slavery. 313 00:19:21,285 --> 00:19:24,705 Jim Crow separates African Americans from education, 314 00:19:24,788 --> 00:19:27,168 wealth, opportunity and justice. 315 00:19:28,250 --> 00:19:30,460 Black Americans were separated so much 316 00:19:30,544 --> 00:19:33,924 that we still have to have a separate Black History Month 317 00:19:34,006 --> 00:19:36,546 just so Americans can know our contributions. 318 00:19:36,633 --> 00:19:37,843 It's so wrong. 319 00:19:38,594 --> 00:19:41,764 Now we're about to see what happens when you separate "equal" 320 00:19:41,847 --> 00:19:42,887 from "protection." 321 00:19:47,311 --> 00:19:49,811 [woman] "During the slave regime, the Southern white man 322 00:19:49,897 --> 00:19:52,517 owned the Negro body and soul." 323 00:19:53,859 --> 00:19:57,779 "It was to his interest to dwarf the soul and preserve the body." 324 00:19:58,614 --> 00:20:01,164 "The white owner rarely permitted his anger 325 00:20:01,241 --> 00:20:03,791 to go so far as to take a life, 326 00:20:03,869 --> 00:20:07,409 which would entail upon him a loss of several hundred dollars." 327 00:20:09,041 --> 00:20:10,881 "But emancipation came, 328 00:20:10,959 --> 00:20:16,629 and the vested interests of the white man in the Negro's body were lost." 329 00:20:17,549 --> 00:20:20,139 "A new system of intimidation came into vogue." 330 00:20:21,094 --> 00:20:25,434 "The Negro was not only whipped and scourged, 331 00:20:26,892 --> 00:20:28,352 he was killed." 332 00:20:29,394 --> 00:20:34,614 ["This Land" by Gary Clark Jr. playing] 333 00:20:35,859 --> 00:20:40,029 The South became a field of really remarkable violence. 334 00:20:40,113 --> 00:20:44,203 [music continues] 335 00:21:03,595 --> 00:21:05,385 Once Black men get the right to vote, 336 00:21:06,139 --> 00:21:07,849 once they begin serving in office, 337 00:21:08,392 --> 00:21:11,272 you get overtly political, organized groups. 338 00:21:18,318 --> 00:21:20,988 [Blight] This is the one period in American history 339 00:21:21,071 --> 00:21:23,871 when overt uses of terrorist violence 340 00:21:23,949 --> 00:21:28,789 became all but a normal part of political life. 341 00:21:31,665 --> 00:21:33,745 The Klan and its many imitators 342 00:21:34,334 --> 00:21:39,844 became the violent arm of a political counter-revolution against Reconstruction. 343 00:21:39,923 --> 00:21:42,933 [Stevenson] Black people start finding themselves 344 00:21:43,010 --> 00:21:45,140 threatened and menaced by mobs. 345 00:21:45,220 --> 00:21:46,640 They were pulled out of jails, 346 00:21:46,722 --> 00:21:49,432 they would be targeted if they asked for fair treatment, 347 00:21:49,516 --> 00:21:52,016 if they tried to vote, if they tried to organize, 348 00:21:52,102 --> 00:21:55,022 if they tried to create political power. 349 00:21:55,105 --> 00:21:58,815 They were burned, they were beaten, they were tortured, they were drowned. 350 00:21:58,900 --> 00:21:59,900 They were hanged. 351 00:22:00,527 --> 00:22:04,027 Let's call it what it was. It was homegrown American terrorism. 352 00:22:04,114 --> 00:22:08,244 [shouting] 353 00:22:14,958 --> 00:22:18,548 [Muhammad] The worst political massacre to occur in the United States 354 00:22:18,628 --> 00:22:21,878 was in Colfax, Louisiana 355 00:22:21,965 --> 00:22:24,715 as a result of a gubernatorial election. 356 00:22:24,801 --> 00:22:29,471 African Americans who had been recognized as having militia rights 357 00:22:29,556 --> 00:22:33,436 gathered to protect the newly seated government 358 00:22:33,518 --> 00:22:36,438 and were massacred in cold blood. 359 00:22:36,521 --> 00:22:39,611 [shouting and screaming] 360 00:22:39,691 --> 00:22:42,611 Estimated numbers run as high as 200 people. 361 00:22:43,737 --> 00:22:46,067 [man] "They were shot down without mercy." 362 00:22:46,573 --> 00:22:49,123 "Many were shot in the back of the head and neck." 363 00:22:49,201 --> 00:22:52,831 "The face of one was completely flattened by blows from a gun." 364 00:22:52,913 --> 00:22:57,333 "Another had been cut across the stomach with a knife after being shot." 365 00:23:00,587 --> 00:23:02,547 [Muhammad] It wasn't just the Colfax Massacre. 366 00:23:02,631 --> 00:23:05,131 Time after time after time, 367 00:23:05,217 --> 00:23:08,007 white Southerners would reverse those gains 368 00:23:08,095 --> 00:23:10,675 made by the formerly enslaved. 369 00:23:17,646 --> 00:23:19,646 We see the high-water mark 370 00:23:19,731 --> 00:23:24,531 of Black electoral participation begin to subside. 371 00:23:26,238 --> 00:23:30,078 By 1901, there was not a single Black person 372 00:23:30,158 --> 00:23:33,698 serving in national office representing the South. 373 00:23:43,964 --> 00:23:47,634 [poignant music throughout] 374 00:24:16,538 --> 00:24:20,168 Lynching became the tool of enforcement 375 00:24:20,876 --> 00:24:24,916 for making sure that the 14th Amendment would never be realized. 376 00:24:25,005 --> 00:24:27,505 Between the 1890s and the 1950s, 377 00:24:27,591 --> 00:24:33,141 more than 4,000 documented lynchings occurred all over the country 378 00:24:33,221 --> 00:24:36,311 from Illinois to Mississippi and in between. 379 00:24:37,017 --> 00:24:41,267 And those lynchings were fundamentally based on the notion 380 00:24:41,354 --> 00:24:45,904 that Black people weren't just inferior, that they were born criminals. 381 00:24:56,411 --> 00:25:00,461 Sometimes in the fight for change we need witnesses. 382 00:25:01,166 --> 00:25:05,586 Ida B. Wells is one of the most forceful witnesses after Reconstruction 383 00:25:05,670 --> 00:25:09,220 to write about what was really happening on the ground in the South. 384 00:25:09,716 --> 00:25:12,966 As a Black woman, no one gives her this authority, 385 00:25:13,553 --> 00:25:17,723 but she takes it upon herself to be her generation's truth-teller. 386 00:25:20,352 --> 00:25:23,522 [Ifill] This is one of those extraordinary stories of 387 00:25:23,605 --> 00:25:26,355 what people could make of themselves. 388 00:25:27,859 --> 00:25:32,569 She was an investigative journalist, a civil rights advocate and activist 389 00:25:32,656 --> 00:25:35,076 and early founder of the NAACP. 390 00:25:35,742 --> 00:25:37,372 She was a fierce woman, 391 00:25:38,328 --> 00:25:40,578 and she had an unrelenting sense of justice. 392 00:25:42,457 --> 00:25:46,667 [Muhammad] What really brought her to national infamy 393 00:25:46,753 --> 00:25:49,463 was the loss of three friends in Memphis. 394 00:25:50,006 --> 00:25:53,296 These three men owned a local grocery store. 395 00:25:53,385 --> 00:25:57,595 They were so successful that they were a threat to white business owners 396 00:25:57,681 --> 00:26:01,141 and they were killed by a white mob. 397 00:26:04,104 --> 00:26:06,824 [as Wells] "It is said that Tom Moss begged for his life 398 00:26:07,899 --> 00:26:11,359 for the sake of his wife and child 399 00:26:11,987 --> 00:26:13,447 and unborn baby." 400 00:26:13,530 --> 00:26:18,160 "When asked if he had anything to say, told them to, 'Tell my people to go West, 401 00:26:18,702 --> 00:26:21,252 there is no justice for them here.'" 402 00:26:21,329 --> 00:26:24,039 "Everybody in town knew and loved Tommy." 403 00:26:24,124 --> 00:26:27,174 "He owned his little home, saved his money, 404 00:26:27,252 --> 00:26:29,842 and went into the grocery with the same ambition 405 00:26:29,921 --> 00:26:31,801 that a young white man would've had." 406 00:26:35,510 --> 00:26:39,010 "He believed, with me, that we should defend the cause of right 407 00:26:39,097 --> 00:26:41,597 and fight wrong wherever we saw it." 408 00:26:41,683 --> 00:26:45,483 "Somebody must show that the Afro-American race 409 00:26:45,562 --> 00:26:48,692 is more sinned against than sinning, 410 00:26:49,482 --> 00:26:53,032 and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so." 411 00:26:58,533 --> 00:27:03,163 She was the first person to begin to really count and document 412 00:27:03,246 --> 00:27:05,166 and enumerate the number of lynchings. 413 00:27:11,630 --> 00:27:14,010 [Stevenson] Ida B. Wells was encouraging Black people 414 00:27:14,090 --> 00:27:16,380 to recognize that they're going to have to fight, 415 00:27:16,468 --> 00:27:19,138 that they'll have to push back against this tyranny. 416 00:27:19,220 --> 00:27:21,510 They're going to have to speak more critically 417 00:27:21,598 --> 00:27:23,928 of our government's failure to protect us. 418 00:27:24,643 --> 00:27:26,603 [as Wells] "Only under the Stars and Stripes 419 00:27:26,686 --> 00:27:28,646 is the human holocaust possible." 420 00:27:28,730 --> 00:27:34,150 "Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, 421 00:27:34,235 --> 00:27:38,445 so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense." 422 00:27:39,574 --> 00:27:43,084 [Muhammad] Lynchings became massive spectacles 423 00:27:43,161 --> 00:27:45,541 where children were let out of school, 424 00:27:45,622 --> 00:27:49,792 photographs were often taken and published as postcards. 425 00:27:50,543 --> 00:27:54,383 One postcard famously said, "I attended this Negro barbecue." 426 00:27:55,340 --> 00:27:57,260 [Stevenson] It wasn't just the Ku Klux Klan, 427 00:27:57,342 --> 00:28:00,052 these were not people wearing robes. 428 00:28:00,136 --> 00:28:05,676 These were bankers, and teachers, and doctors, and law enforcement officers 429 00:28:05,767 --> 00:28:09,767 that were perpetrating these acts of violence with complete impunity. 430 00:28:10,563 --> 00:28:13,903 [Ifill] This racial terrorism, this violence, it's a way of saying, 431 00:28:13,983 --> 00:28:16,283 "Pay no attention to what the 14th Amendment says." 432 00:28:16,361 --> 00:28:18,951 "I know it says you're entitled to equal protection of laws." 433 00:28:19,030 --> 00:28:21,950 "I know the 14th Amendment says that you're full citizens, 434 00:28:22,033 --> 00:28:25,253 but here's who controls the law in this county, 435 00:28:25,787 --> 00:28:28,037 in this town, in this state." 436 00:28:34,963 --> 00:28:37,843 [Muhammad] Ida B. Wells was set upon herself 437 00:28:37,924 --> 00:28:42,224 by a mob that literally burned down her printing press. 438 00:28:42,929 --> 00:28:46,979 She was threatened and eventually fled Memphis 439 00:28:47,058 --> 00:28:50,398 because she could not stay there for fear of her life. 440 00:28:52,355 --> 00:28:56,935 This violence had huge implications for American society. 441 00:28:57,736 --> 00:29:00,486 First of all, the demographic geography of this nation 442 00:29:00,572 --> 00:29:02,992 was shaped by this racial terrorism. 443 00:29:03,074 --> 00:29:06,584 The Black people in Cleveland, and Chicago and Los Angeles and Oakland. 444 00:29:08,121 --> 00:29:11,001 Six million Black people went to those communities 445 00:29:11,082 --> 00:29:13,542 as refugees and exiles from terror. 446 00:29:19,257 --> 00:29:23,847 [Muhammad] Ida B. Wells landed in Chicago in the early 20th Century 447 00:29:23,928 --> 00:29:27,468 to help Black Southerners who were arriving in the city 448 00:29:27,557 --> 00:29:29,847 to adjust to their new conditions. 449 00:29:29,934 --> 00:29:35,154 If we look at the stories of those who left the terrors of the South 450 00:29:35,231 --> 00:29:38,861 for the opportunities of the promised land of the North, 451 00:29:39,444 --> 00:29:44,534 what they often found were a lot of empty promises. 452 00:29:44,616 --> 00:29:48,366 "The black shadow of lawlessness in the form of lynching 453 00:29:48,453 --> 00:29:51,213 is spreading its wings over the whole country." 454 00:29:51,790 --> 00:29:55,500 Now, let me be clear about what those empty promises were. 455 00:29:56,044 --> 00:30:00,474 In 1919, in Ida's new hometown of Chicago, 456 00:30:00,548 --> 00:30:06,048 days of violence against Black Chicagoans leaves nearly 40 people dead, 457 00:30:06,638 --> 00:30:09,848 hundreds injured, and over a thousand homeless. 458 00:30:10,975 --> 00:30:14,055 The Resistance is no longer a Southern problem. 459 00:30:14,771 --> 00:30:16,611 It's now an American problem. 460 00:30:17,106 --> 00:30:19,726 [gunshots] 461 00:30:19,818 --> 00:30:23,148 Hostility develops. Blacks learn a bitter lesson: 462 00:30:23,738 --> 00:30:27,778 that Northern violence isn't any different from Southern violence. 463 00:30:27,867 --> 00:30:30,327 You gold-teeth-gold-chain-wearin', 464 00:30:30,411 --> 00:30:34,461 fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin', monkey, ape, baboon, 465 00:30:34,541 --> 00:30:37,881 big thigh, fast-runnin', high-jumpin', spear-chuckin', 466 00:30:37,961 --> 00:30:43,931 360-degree-basketball-dunkin' titsun, spade, moulinyan. 467 00:30:44,551 --> 00:30:48,051 Take your fuckin' pizza-pizza and go the fuck back to Africa. 468 00:30:53,726 --> 00:30:58,146 [shouting] 469 00:30:58,231 --> 00:31:03,861 [crowd chants] You will not replace us! 470 00:31:03,945 --> 00:31:09,485 [crowd chants] You will not replace us! 471 00:31:14,247 --> 00:31:16,747 [horn blares] 472 00:31:17,834 --> 00:31:22,674 [Muhammad] Ida B. Wells would go on to take her anti-lynching campaign 473 00:31:22,755 --> 00:31:25,165 to the international court of opinion, 474 00:31:25,258 --> 00:31:28,048 traveling to various places in Europe, 475 00:31:28,136 --> 00:31:32,516 describing racism and lynching as an abomination 476 00:31:32,599 --> 00:31:35,269 for a so-called civilized nation. 477 00:31:38,146 --> 00:31:42,316 It's astonishing to me that there has not been a movie about this woman's life. 478 00:31:43,610 --> 00:31:46,860 Truly one of the extraordinary women in our country's history. 479 00:32:00,126 --> 00:32:04,506 There's a reason Ida B. Wells hasn't gotten her Oscar-winning biopic yet, 480 00:32:05,298 --> 00:32:08,798 and why she didn't win the Pulitzer Prize until 2020, 481 00:32:09,677 --> 00:32:11,797 eighty-nine years after she died. 482 00:32:12,430 --> 00:32:16,730 It's the same reason you might not be so familiar with the 14th Amendment. 483 00:32:17,310 --> 00:32:19,560 Because the former Confederacy 484 00:32:20,271 --> 00:32:23,521 got the final cut on the movie of the Civil War. 485 00:32:24,108 --> 00:32:28,528 In this new story, the South was a perfect society, 486 00:32:28,613 --> 00:32:32,123 victimized by the North, and unjustly destroyed. 487 00:32:32,951 --> 00:32:38,791 This myth, called the Lost Cause, says that slavery wasn't that bad. 488 00:32:39,374 --> 00:32:41,634 Therefore, we never needed the 14th. 489 00:32:42,710 --> 00:32:45,380 Sometimes making up a new story 490 00:32:45,463 --> 00:32:49,383 is easier than confronting the harsh realities of the past. 491 00:32:55,098 --> 00:32:58,728 Reconstruction less failed than it was actually defeated. 492 00:33:01,896 --> 00:33:05,606 It starts what we call the Lost Cause mythology 493 00:33:05,692 --> 00:33:07,862 that becomes very important after the Civil War. 494 00:33:09,362 --> 00:33:12,782 The idea that the South had fought this noble battle, 495 00:33:13,741 --> 00:33:16,241 you know, that permeated white society. 496 00:33:20,665 --> 00:33:23,285 [Blight] What the Lost Cause ideology became 497 00:33:23,376 --> 00:33:25,666 was more of a victory narrative. 498 00:33:26,879 --> 00:33:31,299 What they came to celebrate in the South was the victory over Reconstruction. 499 00:33:32,343 --> 00:33:36,063 [Stevenson] And we saw that as the iconography of the Confederacy 500 00:33:36,139 --> 00:33:39,679 was restored in the American South with monuments and memorials. 501 00:33:47,608 --> 00:33:51,608 The raising of these huge, pharaonic monuments… 502 00:33:55,158 --> 00:33:59,288 …is really a kind of social victory lap, 503 00:33:59,370 --> 00:34:04,420 as symbols that this is what the South is. 504 00:34:04,917 --> 00:34:08,667 These are our gods. 505 00:34:18,556 --> 00:34:20,556 My orders from General Lee 506 00:34:20,641 --> 00:34:22,731 is to hold the Mason-Dixon line, 507 00:34:22,810 --> 00:34:25,100 and no Yankees are crossing it. 508 00:34:25,688 --> 00:34:27,148 General Lee? 509 00:34:27,231 --> 00:34:30,901 Why, the war between the states ended almost 90 years ago. 510 00:34:30,985 --> 00:34:33,315 I'm no clock-watcher, 511 00:34:33,988 --> 00:34:36,568 and until I hears from General Lee official, 512 00:34:36,657 --> 00:34:40,447 I'ma blasting any Yankee that sets foot on Southern soil, 513 00:34:40,536 --> 00:34:42,406 so scram, Yankee! 514 00:34:42,497 --> 00:34:43,577 [gunshot] 515 00:34:47,752 --> 00:34:52,222 [Blight] By the 20th century, the medium of film is extremely important. 516 00:34:52,298 --> 00:34:54,968 The white supremacist epic Birth of a Nation 517 00:34:55,051 --> 00:34:58,601 and one of the most popular films of all time, Gone With the Wind, 518 00:34:58,679 --> 00:35:02,179 became highly popular visions 519 00:35:02,266 --> 00:35:05,056 of the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 520 00:35:05,144 --> 00:35:08,824 not just for Southerners, but for a lot of Northerners as well. 521 00:35:12,235 --> 00:35:14,065 [Stevenson] Films like Birth of a Nation 522 00:35:14,153 --> 00:35:18,663 were trying to tell a new story about the valor and nobility 523 00:35:18,741 --> 00:35:21,121 of the effort to preserve slavery, 524 00:35:21,202 --> 00:35:22,912 of the Confederacy, 525 00:35:22,995 --> 00:35:26,495 to reinforce this idea that the South never did anything wrong. 526 00:35:28,835 --> 00:35:31,795 [Muhammad] The actual rewriting of history 527 00:35:31,879 --> 00:35:37,799 was another big part of the story or narrative of Black inferiority. 528 00:35:37,885 --> 00:35:39,635 There's a mythology of Reconstruction 529 00:35:39,720 --> 00:35:43,060 that it was the lowest point in the history of American democracy. 530 00:35:43,558 --> 00:35:47,098 And the reason was that African Americans were given power, 531 00:35:47,186 --> 00:35:48,896 the right to vote and hold office, 532 00:35:48,980 --> 00:35:53,360 and therefore an orgy of corruption and misgovernment followed… 533 00:35:56,070 --> 00:35:59,990 …from which eventually the South was rescued by the Klan. 534 00:36:00,074 --> 00:36:02,334 [sinister music playing] 535 00:36:06,956 --> 00:36:09,496 [bleating] 536 00:36:10,084 --> 00:36:12,754 [Stevenson] When that film was screened at the White House, 537 00:36:12,837 --> 00:36:16,837 Woodrow Wilson gave an American stamp of approval 538 00:36:17,341 --> 00:36:21,551 to this new world order where there would be violence and terror. 539 00:36:22,221 --> 00:36:25,351 [woman] "The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct 540 00:36:25,433 --> 00:36:26,483 of self-preservation 541 00:36:27,059 --> 00:36:30,769 to rid themselves of the burden of the votes of ignorant Negroes." 542 00:36:30,855 --> 00:36:33,685 "Negro rule was finally put an end to in the South 543 00:36:33,774 --> 00:36:36,944 and the natural, inevitable ascendancy of the whites, 544 00:36:37,028 --> 00:36:39,568 the responsible class, established." 545 00:36:40,072 --> 00:36:41,992 [narrator] Once Birth of a Nation premieres, 546 00:36:42,074 --> 00:36:45,244 the KKK explodes all across America, 547 00:36:45,328 --> 00:36:46,908 growing larger than ever. 548 00:36:47,538 --> 00:36:50,748 Having these images seared in people's minds 549 00:36:50,833 --> 00:36:53,003 through this new popular medium 550 00:36:53,085 --> 00:36:55,545 not only reinforces white supremacy, 551 00:36:55,630 --> 00:36:59,880 but also helps to ignite a new type of racial vengeance. 552 00:37:00,593 --> 00:37:03,103 -[gunshots] -[screaming] 553 00:37:04,472 --> 00:37:07,482 [poignant music] 554 00:37:14,065 --> 00:37:16,355 [Muhammad] In every way imaginable, 555 00:37:16,442 --> 00:37:20,992 writers and journalists and scientists set out to prove 556 00:37:21,072 --> 00:37:26,202 that Black people were inferior and a dangerous threat to civilization. 557 00:37:27,453 --> 00:37:32,043 It has allowed white people, with scarcely any pang of conscience whatever, 558 00:37:32,959 --> 00:37:37,759 to create in every generation only the Negro they wish to see. 559 00:37:43,469 --> 00:37:45,509 Yes, ma'am. 560 00:37:45,596 --> 00:37:48,176 [man] Who was that lady I saw you with this afternoon? 561 00:37:48,266 --> 00:37:51,346 That was no lady. That was my wife. 562 00:37:51,435 --> 00:37:53,645 [laughter] 563 00:37:53,729 --> 00:37:56,229 [Blight] The Old South in the Lost Cause ideology 564 00:37:56,315 --> 00:37:59,235 became a kind of cultural escape 565 00:38:00,152 --> 00:38:04,072 of a sentimentalized Old South 566 00:38:04,156 --> 00:38:06,326 that had been an ordered civilization 567 00:38:06,909 --> 00:38:08,079 where Black people 568 00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:10,660 were by and large a contented people, 569 00:38:10,746 --> 00:38:13,746 who had found their place in the order of things. 570 00:38:15,710 --> 00:38:19,420 [Epps] That was the beginning of the retelling of the Civil War Story. 571 00:38:19,505 --> 00:38:22,925 [poignant music] 572 00:38:29,640 --> 00:38:31,980 [man] Would you paint a picture of what it was like 573 00:38:32,059 --> 00:38:34,729 on the plantation in your early days? 574 00:38:34,812 --> 00:38:36,772 [woman] It was a lovely, happy time. 575 00:38:36,856 --> 00:38:38,516 Everyone was happy. 576 00:38:39,150 --> 00:38:42,700 We never heard of all these things that we hear about today. 577 00:38:42,778 --> 00:38:46,158 And then it's no disgrace to say they're like children-- 578 00:38:46,240 --> 00:38:47,580 When we say that, 579 00:38:49,035 --> 00:38:52,115 it's because they are like happy children. 580 00:38:52,204 --> 00:38:53,714 There were always dissenters 581 00:38:53,789 --> 00:38:57,079 to this sentimentalized Lost Cause vision about the war, 582 00:38:57,168 --> 00:39:02,798 but, by and large, they weren't winning the cultural battle, 583 00:39:02,882 --> 00:39:07,932 the literary battle for the hearts and minds of the American imagination. 584 00:39:08,012 --> 00:39:11,682 [brass fanfare] 585 00:39:11,766 --> 00:39:15,476 [man] There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields 586 00:39:15,561 --> 00:39:17,611 called the Old South. 587 00:39:17,688 --> 00:39:21,438 [banjo plays] 588 00:39:21,525 --> 00:39:23,685 Here in this pretty world, 589 00:39:24,278 --> 00:39:26,908 gallantry took its last bow. 590 00:39:26,989 --> 00:39:29,989 [sweeping waltz playing] 591 00:39:30,076 --> 00:39:34,496 Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, 592 00:39:35,581 --> 00:39:37,171 of master and slave. 593 00:39:38,667 --> 00:39:40,747 Look for it only in books… 594 00:39:40,836 --> 00:39:43,046 [dramatic orchestral music] 595 00:39:43,130 --> 00:39:45,840 …for it is no more than a dream remembered. 596 00:39:48,135 --> 00:39:49,295 A civilization… 597 00:39:50,721 --> 00:39:53,811 gone with the wind. 598 00:39:53,891 --> 00:39:56,391 [orchestral music builds and fades] 599 00:39:57,603 --> 00:40:01,023 [Blight] These stories seeped into the American mind. 600 00:40:03,109 --> 00:40:07,409 They could escape into this ordered, older civilization 601 00:40:07,488 --> 00:40:08,658 before the war. 602 00:40:10,032 --> 00:40:13,742 If they were anxious or offended 603 00:40:13,828 --> 00:40:18,168 or fearful of all the new immigrants coming to America, 604 00:40:18,249 --> 00:40:20,209 and all the growing big cities, 605 00:40:20,292 --> 00:40:24,212 and all the industrialization that seemed to be out of control. 606 00:40:27,299 --> 00:40:29,839 [man] On the plantation outside Charleston 607 00:40:29,927 --> 00:40:32,757 where his family has lived for eight generations, 608 00:40:32,847 --> 00:40:36,727 Norwood Hastie was asked if he thinks slavery was immoral. 609 00:40:36,809 --> 00:40:39,439 No, no, I don't because-- 610 00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,270 Because, uh, when a slave came from Africa, 611 00:40:42,356 --> 00:40:44,526 he couldn't speak the language. 612 00:40:44,608 --> 00:40:48,068 He was totally untrained to do any job at all 613 00:40:48,154 --> 00:40:49,914 that would fit in the civilization. 614 00:40:50,614 --> 00:40:52,494 Someone had to take care of him. 615 00:40:52,575 --> 00:40:54,115 So, I think slavery 616 00:40:54,201 --> 00:40:57,581 just had to be in those early days, 617 00:40:57,663 --> 00:40:59,753 but customs die awful hard. 618 00:40:59,832 --> 00:41:01,832 It takes… takes a long time 619 00:41:01,917 --> 00:41:04,667 and everyone knew years ago 620 00:41:04,753 --> 00:41:07,803 that the Negro would have to be given equality. 621 00:41:07,882 --> 00:41:12,432 But in the South, white people's attitudes will change in time. 622 00:41:12,511 --> 00:41:15,431 I'm a lot more liberal than I was five years ago, 623 00:41:15,514 --> 00:41:18,604 and I know I'll be a lot more liberal five years from now, 624 00:41:18,684 --> 00:41:21,694 and I think almost everyone else is in that category. 625 00:41:22,229 --> 00:41:24,479 [man] What has tended to make you more liberal? 626 00:41:26,525 --> 00:41:30,065 The realization that the Negro 627 00:41:30,946 --> 00:41:32,986 is a human being like anyone else. 628 00:41:34,158 --> 00:41:36,788 [man] Mr. Hastie, what did you think we were 629 00:41:36,869 --> 00:41:40,039 before you began to think of us as human beings? 630 00:41:40,831 --> 00:41:42,291 Well, in a way… 631 00:41:43,042 --> 00:41:46,212 we thought of you almost as a very superior pet. 632 00:41:48,631 --> 00:41:50,971 I was born in 1950 in the South. 633 00:41:51,467 --> 00:41:54,217 This is the period of high segregation. 634 00:41:54,303 --> 00:41:56,433 [atmospheric music playing] 635 00:41:56,514 --> 00:41:59,934 We were in an environment that was almost completely 636 00:42:00,017 --> 00:42:02,847 shaped by this ideology of the Lost Cause, 637 00:42:02,937 --> 00:42:07,647 of the idea that the Confederacy had been this high-water mark in American history 638 00:42:07,733 --> 00:42:11,153 and that we had been falling off ever since then. 639 00:42:13,531 --> 00:42:16,831 When you've grown up with that, it's just all-encompassing. 640 00:42:17,493 --> 00:42:20,703 You know, your vision of what America is, 641 00:42:20,788 --> 00:42:23,248 it turns out to be a vision of white supremacy, 642 00:42:23,332 --> 00:42:25,542 and you don't even really know it. 643 00:42:30,548 --> 00:42:36,008 [hip hop music] 644 00:42:36,095 --> 00:42:37,595 In 1861, 645 00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,680 South Carolina was the first state to stand up for its own rights. 646 00:42:40,766 --> 00:42:44,096 The history of that flag has so much to do 647 00:42:44,186 --> 00:42:45,686 with the Southern heritage. 648 00:42:46,272 --> 00:42:47,942 Not slavery. 649 00:42:48,023 --> 00:42:49,613 I'm here to defend my heritage, 650 00:42:49,692 --> 00:42:52,992 my heritage is not that of slavery. My family never owned slaves. 651 00:42:53,070 --> 00:42:54,200 I don't have any slaves. 652 00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,450 It represents slavery. No matter how much they say it doesn't, it does. 653 00:42:57,533 --> 00:42:59,873 That flag does not deserve to fly in South Carolina. 654 00:42:59,952 --> 00:43:02,542 We want it down because we think it's disrespectful to us. 655 00:43:02,621 --> 00:43:04,161 We come to show our support 656 00:43:04,248 --> 00:43:06,918 to keep our history and our heritage the way it is, 657 00:43:07,001 --> 00:43:08,751 because it is what made America. 658 00:43:08,836 --> 00:43:11,376 It sanitizes the Confederacy and the Confederate-- 659 00:43:11,463 --> 00:43:14,053 The reason the Confederacy existed was to protect slavery. 660 00:43:14,133 --> 00:43:17,143 We're taking pride in our heritage and honoring our ancestors. 661 00:43:17,219 --> 00:43:19,139 It's about heritage, and it's about pride. 662 00:43:19,221 --> 00:43:21,311 Here it's our heritage. It's who we are. 663 00:43:21,390 --> 00:43:23,270 [man] This is everybody's heritage. 664 00:43:23,350 --> 00:43:27,020 People that's saying, "Oh well, it's my flag. It's my heritage." 665 00:43:27,104 --> 00:43:32,324 Your heritage is slavery, oppression, and KKK terrorism, 666 00:43:32,401 --> 00:43:34,151 and that's what that flag stands for. 667 00:43:34,236 --> 00:43:36,156 [man] This is part of who we are. 668 00:43:36,238 --> 00:43:38,568 The problems in South Carolina, throughout the world 669 00:43:38,657 --> 00:43:42,747 are not because of a movie or symbol, it's because of what's in people's heart. 670 00:43:42,828 --> 00:43:45,618 How do you go back and reconstruct America? 671 00:43:51,503 --> 00:43:52,343 Mr. Speaker, 672 00:43:52,421 --> 00:43:56,801 I come today to give you a perspective that you may not have heard. 673 00:43:56,884 --> 00:43:58,934 As a pastor of a church, 674 00:43:59,762 --> 00:44:03,102 of a congregation in Charleston County, Mount Horr AME Church, 675 00:44:04,391 --> 00:44:08,231 I listened to the stories and the pains 676 00:44:08,312 --> 00:44:13,232 of the people who feel so offended by the fact that a flag 677 00:44:13,317 --> 00:44:17,147 that has been used as a symbol to brutalize 678 00:44:17,237 --> 00:44:19,867 demoralize and humiliate them 679 00:44:20,449 --> 00:44:22,489 still flies in our state capitol. 680 00:44:22,576 --> 00:44:27,116 Let us be the shining example to this great state, 681 00:44:27,706 --> 00:44:30,246 to all of the people that we represent, 682 00:44:30,334 --> 00:44:34,054 that for maybe the first time in our great history, 683 00:44:34,129 --> 00:44:38,549 we are willing not to do what is in our own self-interest, 684 00:44:38,634 --> 00:44:42,854 but to do what is for the best of all of South Carolina, 685 00:44:42,930 --> 00:44:45,680 and I say to you again today this… [sound fades] 686 00:44:45,766 --> 00:44:48,306 [Blight] In April of 2015, 687 00:44:48,394 --> 00:44:51,274 I was at a conference in Charleston, South Carolina. 688 00:44:52,356 --> 00:44:55,896 A remarkable conference all about the ending of the Civil War. 689 00:44:57,069 --> 00:45:00,859 But the principal speaker of the day was the Reverend Clementa Pinckney. 690 00:45:02,074 --> 00:45:06,374 [Pinckney] I stand with mixed emotions, with joy, but also, as a man of God, 691 00:45:06,453 --> 00:45:10,333 with sadness, knowing that so many died for the freedom of others. 692 00:45:10,416 --> 00:45:13,246 [Blight] Pinckney argued, as a preacher would, 693 00:45:13,335 --> 00:45:14,875 that since the Civil War 694 00:45:15,462 --> 00:45:19,682 we had, to some degree, experienced a redemption. 695 00:45:19,758 --> 00:45:22,548 He even honored Confederate veterans. 696 00:45:23,220 --> 00:45:26,100 His "fellow South Carolinians," he said. 697 00:45:28,392 --> 00:45:30,392 We sang "America the Beautiful," 698 00:45:30,477 --> 00:45:33,307 and I actually held a program with Reverend Pinckney. 699 00:45:33,397 --> 00:45:36,317 We sang from the same printed lyrics. 700 00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:38,900 One of the most remarkable public history events 701 00:45:38,986 --> 00:45:40,446 I had ever participated in. 702 00:45:41,613 --> 00:45:43,823 The problem, of course, came two months later. 703 00:45:44,366 --> 00:45:45,526 [echoing boom] 704 00:45:45,617 --> 00:45:49,997 [choir sings] ♪ America ♪ 705 00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:54,840 ♪ America ♪ 706 00:45:54,918 --> 00:45:58,758 [news anchor] …reporting a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. 707 00:45:58,839 --> 00:46:00,629 [reports continue and overlap] 708 00:46:00,716 --> 00:46:02,676 [all sounds end abruptly] 709 00:46:03,927 --> 00:46:05,387 That was Clementa Pinckney. 710 00:46:05,888 --> 00:46:12,848 ♪ God shed his grace on thee ♪ 711 00:46:22,446 --> 00:46:24,486 In 1961, 712 00:46:24,573 --> 00:46:27,493 the state of South Carolina raised a Confederate flag 713 00:46:27,576 --> 00:46:29,906 over the dome of their capital, 714 00:46:29,995 --> 00:46:33,825 and they wrote into the law that the flag couldn't be lowered for any reason 715 00:46:33,916 --> 00:46:36,836 without approval from the State House. 716 00:46:36,919 --> 00:46:38,419 Well, that's where the flag was 717 00:46:38,504 --> 00:46:42,224 when, in 2015, a white supremacist named Dylan Roof 718 00:46:42,299 --> 00:46:47,759 entered a historically Black church, Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, 719 00:46:47,846 --> 00:46:50,766 and murdered nine Black parishioners during a prayer meeting. 720 00:46:51,350 --> 00:46:55,440 [reporter] One of the deadliest attacks against a Black church in US history. 721 00:46:55,521 --> 00:46:57,691 One of the victims is the pastor of the church, 722 00:46:57,773 --> 00:46:59,653 41-year-old Senator Clementa Pinckney. 723 00:46:59,733 --> 00:47:03,283 [man] Senator Pinckney was the moral conscience 724 00:47:03,362 --> 00:47:04,572 of the General Assembly. 725 00:47:07,449 --> 00:47:10,989 [Newsome] When it came time to bury the pastor of Mother Emanuel, 726 00:47:11,578 --> 00:47:14,498 his casket was processed through the streets, 727 00:47:15,249 --> 00:47:19,339 and the state of South Carolina lowered the American flag, 728 00:47:19,419 --> 00:47:21,709 but because of this law that they had written, 729 00:47:21,797 --> 00:47:23,917 the Confederate flag stayed at the top. 730 00:47:26,927 --> 00:47:28,547 It sent a clear message 731 00:47:28,637 --> 00:47:32,887 that even though the South had lost the Civil War, 732 00:47:32,975 --> 00:47:37,225 white supremacy reigned above every other form of power. 733 00:47:39,982 --> 00:47:41,982 I have a deep personal connection 734 00:47:42,067 --> 00:47:44,947 to the history of slavery in South Carolina. 735 00:47:45,028 --> 00:47:47,448 My ancestors were enslaved in South Carolina, 736 00:47:47,531 --> 00:47:51,451 I've had relatives tell me about their experiences with the Klan. 737 00:47:53,912 --> 00:47:57,252 I felt very strongly that a statement had to be made. 738 00:47:59,877 --> 00:48:02,417 -[man 1] Ma'am! -[man 2] Ma'am, get off the pole. 739 00:48:02,504 --> 00:48:06,094 -[man 2] Come down off the pole. -[man 1] Ma'am, come down off the pole. 740 00:48:06,884 --> 00:48:08,224 [horns beep] 741 00:48:08,302 --> 00:48:10,472 [man 1] Ma'am! Ma'am! 742 00:48:11,179 --> 00:48:15,389 You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. 743 00:48:15,475 --> 00:48:17,095 This flag comes down today. 744 00:48:17,185 --> 00:48:18,515 [man] Get off the pole. 745 00:48:19,021 --> 00:48:22,611 [Newsome] Of course, I knew that I was going to be arrested, 746 00:48:22,691 --> 00:48:25,901 but we could not carry on like this anymore. 747 00:48:25,986 --> 00:48:28,856 [dramatic pulsing music plays] 748 00:48:37,539 --> 00:48:39,999 [Blight] There's nothing automatic about progress. 749 00:48:41,043 --> 00:48:44,093 There is nothing inevitable about progress. 750 00:48:45,422 --> 00:48:49,302 Progress comes because people make decisions and people make choices. 751 00:48:51,470 --> 00:48:54,220 It seems to me that Pinckney and his parishioners 752 00:48:55,307 --> 00:48:57,477 died in a horrific sacrifice, 753 00:48:58,644 --> 00:49:01,064 perhaps to force the rest of the country 754 00:49:01,563 --> 00:49:03,193 to finally have a reckoning, 755 00:49:04,232 --> 00:49:05,232 if we can, 756 00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:10,070 with the meaning of the Confederacy, and the meaning of the Civil War, 757 00:49:10,155 --> 00:49:13,655 and the meaning of emancipation and the meaning of the 14th Amendment 758 00:49:14,159 --> 00:49:17,249 in our ever-recurring present. 759 00:49:21,667 --> 00:49:24,207 [crowd chatter] 760 00:49:24,294 --> 00:49:28,424 [shouting] 761 00:49:28,507 --> 00:49:30,677 [clamoring] 762 00:49:32,552 --> 00:49:36,772 [applause and cheering] 763 00:49:44,773 --> 00:49:47,573 [crowd chatter] 764 00:49:47,651 --> 00:49:51,741 [cheering] 765 00:49:51,822 --> 00:49:54,532 [poignant music playing] 766 00:49:58,662 --> 00:50:01,042 [cheering intensifies] 767 00:50:01,123 --> 00:50:04,333 [music swelling] 768 00:50:10,048 --> 00:50:12,468 [cheering continues] 769 00:50:26,857 --> 00:50:29,567 [man] These monuments celebrate a fictional Confederacy, 770 00:50:29,651 --> 00:50:32,201 ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, 771 00:50:32,279 --> 00:50:34,869 ignoring the terror that it actually stood for. 772 00:50:35,991 --> 00:50:38,701 We cannot be afraid of the truth. 773 00:50:52,090 --> 00:50:55,590 [narrator] Progress does not come without resistance. 774 00:50:55,677 --> 00:50:57,387 It is not a straight line. 775 00:50:57,929 --> 00:51:00,599 It's messy. It's urgent. 776 00:51:00,682 --> 00:51:04,272 Even people who are sympathetic to the cause sometimes say, 777 00:51:04,352 --> 00:51:06,562 "Just wait, there are bigger issues," 778 00:51:06,646 --> 00:51:09,146 or, "That's too much, too fast." 779 00:51:10,025 --> 00:51:12,145 But for the people who are suffering, 780 00:51:13,236 --> 00:51:15,816 justice cannot wait. 781 00:51:17,908 --> 00:51:20,578 [Martin Luther King Jr.] We'll be able to join hands and sing 782 00:51:20,660 --> 00:51:23,080 in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 783 00:51:23,163 --> 00:51:28,253 "Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, we are free at--" 784 00:51:28,335 --> 00:51:30,665 [gunshots] 785 00:51:30,754 --> 00:51:33,594 We are in a state of emergency. 786 00:51:33,673 --> 00:51:35,303 [protesters] No justice, no peace! 787 00:51:35,383 --> 00:51:36,593 Hands up, don't shoot! 788 00:51:36,676 --> 00:51:41,766 [man] America, you have proven yourself for 435 years now 789 00:51:41,848 --> 00:51:43,768 to have no respect for a Black life. 790 00:51:43,850 --> 00:51:45,390 [protesters] Black lives matter! 791 00:51:45,477 --> 00:51:47,097 [chanting] 792 00:51:49,523 --> 00:51:54,243 [woman] This is a coordinated activity happening across this nation. 793 00:51:54,319 --> 00:51:56,779 Enough is enough. 794 00:51:56,863 --> 00:51:58,373 [shouting] 795 00:51:58,448 --> 00:52:04,408 It's time for us to stand up and say, "Get your knee off our necks!" 796 00:52:06,039 --> 00:52:09,499 -[man] What? -[crowd] I can't breathe. 797 00:52:09,584 --> 00:52:12,134 [woman] We're gonna honor the fact that I have to fight 798 00:52:12,212 --> 00:52:15,222 through all these people to say my life matters! 799 00:52:15,298 --> 00:52:19,548 They are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge. 800 00:52:24,182 --> 00:52:25,522 Let's get Gone With the Wind. 801 00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:28,350 -Can we get Gone With the Wind back? -[cheering] 802 00:52:28,436 --> 00:52:34,316 [hip hop music plays throughout]