Surviving America

- Can you please stop, sir I'm asking you to stop.

- Please, don't come close to me.

- Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording me.

Please don't come close me.

Please, turn your phone off.

Please don't come close me.

- You're taking pictures of me, I'll call the cops.

Please call the cops.

Please call the cops.

- I'm gonna tell them there is a African American man

threatening my life.

Yeah, now racism. (chuckles)

Racism didn't just happen long ago is still happening now.

- Well the first time I had a personal experience of racism,

I mean growing up in Atlantic Beach

because it's nestled between Myrtle Beach

and North Myrtle Beach,

we were, we were aware of our blackness at a very early age.

Once we were ventured outside of our neighborhoods,

we would get harassed by the police officers.

It's systematic racism

and oppression of specifically black people is,

live and will.

My mother was born in 1965, that's my mother.

Not my grandmother, my mother

that means that my mother is the first woman in my family,

my immediate family, to be born a free woman

with all of her full rights.

I'm not talking about being free from slave, slavery

but be being born in America with her full rights

as an American citizen.

That is my mom, not my great, great,

great, great, great grandmother, that's my mom

and so to say, oh, that happened so long ago, no.

Historically, where we are in the timeline

of the 400 years that we've been in this nation since 1619,

when the first African people came

to the shores of America enslaved.

Up until now, we are still in an intense timeline,

where we see a racism and systems of oppression

still affecting us.

2020 or 1920, in the future,

will people know the difference.

- And CNN cannot project that Barack Obama,

47 years old will become the president elect

of the United States.

- In 2008. The US and the world saw

a change and hope renewed.

By 2016 the white lash began.

He's walking out like big high fives,

smiling, laughing like to punch him in the face,

I'll tell you.

- To understand how we got here,

we must first understand where we began.

And your name is Toby.

- Here, people stolen from a continent

enforced under the rule of white supremacy.

Dred Scott, dared to sue for the freedom

of himself and his family after the slave masters

moved to a free state, he lost.

The decision was the final spark to start a civil war.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves

but not without resistance and taking years

for the word of mouth to travel.

Many slaves were forced to stay on as sharecroppers.

I don't think that America ever

has been prayed for my people

and that is why we always get the question of why,

why are you so angry, duh why do you think we're angry?

- during Reconstruction 265 black delegates

elected 100 previously enslaved men,

16 of them served in Congress,

roughly between the timeframe of 1865 to 1877.

The South saw reconstruction as humiliating

and did not welcome it.

Slave owners receive reparations and former slaves received

a new life under the Jim Crow laws.

- We can't adequately assess the institutional racism

in America without looking at the history of America.

So for black people, we you know, we were brought here

to be the burden bearers of the country.

We weren't bought to be citizen.

Is a code word for

make America white again, make it like it was

when we were in charge, make it like it was before

black folks started valuing themselves,

making like it was before we had a black president.

- after the Civil War, and protection

of the 13th 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution,

along with the original Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Black Americans enjoy a period when they were allowed

to vote, participate in the political process,

acquire lands, employment and use public accommodations.

President Grant, was elected largely in part to 500,000

new black male voters in the South.

Reconstruction had its shortcomings,

women still couldn't vote and Native Americans

were stripped of their land

and forced to reservations or massacre,

while black Americans face mob violence and murder,

rendering the 15th amendment which was designed

to enhance, protect and guaranteed

black male voting nationwide a dead letter.

No, no, America has not improved.

America is done, is only doing what is forced to do.

Frederick Douglass said back in the day that,

"Power does not concede power without a struggle."

And he said it over 100 years ago

and that remains true to this day.

- Opposition quickly arose and found means

to reverse the gangs.

July 30th, 1866 former Confederates attack

a constitutional convention in the city of New Orleans.

By the time President Grant died in 1885,

Jim Crow had replaced reconstruction

and the little rights gang was stripped away.

The route began as a black codes in 1865,

following the ratification of the 13th amendment

and appeared in the South to push black people

to indentured servitude,

removed voting rights, control housing and how they travel.

Former Confederate soldiers worked

as the police and the judges.

Growing up Mississippi was a tough era

because I grew up in the time

when we had nothing but racism.

We weren't allowed into the Courthouse Square

and we had to walk around the courthouse yard

and we saw other rays come and we had to step off

into the mud and let them walk on the sidewalk

when we weren't allowed to walk on the sidewalk.

- How can you get over something like that?

The way your parents was treated

and their grandparents was treated, you gonna get over it?

And people being killed daily.

During this same period,

the Klan was born in Pulaski, Tennessee

as a private club for Confederate Veterans.

By the 1920s Motion Pictures arrived

and sold it a new way to advertise.

America was bombarded with racist images in film

and the ads they show.

- Oh, my gosh look at how she's acting now.

Look at how she's acting now.

Has no place to call me back

and now they're shoving me and...

Oh, they are shoving me.

- And actually during Jim Crow, Atlantic Beach

was the only beach that black people

could come to in Myrtle Beach.

- The laws flourished, banning black Americans

from living in white neighborhoods.

Your home will go down in value

and crime rates will rapidly rise.

If you went to Southern Part of Indiana

I kind or ran into the same thing, you know

'cause in Indianapolis same thing

or tourists know places down South

because and how people in the Southern part of Indiana,

they killed a lady selling encyclopedias

in the Southern part of Indiana before

because she was just dark, goes dark it's downtown.

Because up north,

I was shocked that it was as

segregated as was that the black people

lived in their little areas and couldn't live anywhere else

because they could not buy a house anywhere else

and then whites lived all over, I was really surprised.

- Black towns began to rise in flourished.

Jealousy set in, those towns soon were turned to ash.

Former Confederate soldiers began promoting the Civil War

as a just war and reconstruction as a lost cause.

Pitcher Films helped promote the propaganda to the masses.

Post World War One, white Americans were scared

that the black Americans will have renewed hopes

of being equals, lynchings became prevalent

as lynchings increased, so did the race wars,

although vastly one sided.

By the 1920s Motion Pictures arrived

and so did a new way to advertise.

America was bombarded with racist images in film

and the ads they showed.

World War Two, legal covenants made it difficult

or impossible to buy homes due to redlining.

- See, the Holocaust didn't happen in this country.

So when the Jews mentioned it,

they're talking about a different group of people, Germany

so it's not a reflection on America, per se.

- Black Americans had grown weary

and fought against the constant oppression

but made little headway.

- Oh, no, that's still slavery, just a different form.

You know, you know, it's like a liar,

sometimes when you catch a liar in a lie,

they find another way to lie.

- Was the way the social, the social contract

was written up.

See, the way racism was created,

was to keep kind of poor white people believe in it.

They were in the same position as rich white people