01x06 - Justice

[bunniefuu]

Frederick Douglass, 1880.

"When the Hebrews
were emancipated,

"they were told to take
spoil from the Egyptians.

"When the serfs of
Russia were emancipated,

"they were given three acres of
ground upon which they could live

"and make a living.

"But not so when our
sl*ves were emancipated.

"They were sent
away empty-handed,

"without money, without friends,

"and without a foot
of land to stand upon.

"Old and young, sick and well,
were turned loose to the open sky,

naked to their enemies."

This is The 1619 Project.

When I think about equality,

I think about the story that
is often told in this country.

And according to that story,

Black Americans have
struggled to achieve equality,

but that struggle has
mostly been overcome.

To hear many tell it,

America is, by and large, an
equal opportunity society.

We point to The
Emancipation Proclamation,

or the wins of the
Civil Rights Movement...

- The only limit to a
man's hope for happiness

and for the future
of his children

shall be his own ability.

or the election
of a Black president

as proof of justice.

- Change has come to America.

But that
narrative ignores

the persistent and
vast racial wealth gap

that decade after decade

is the most glaring marker
of Black inequality.

Today, the average white household
has eight times the wealth

of an average Black household.

♪ Who'll pay
reparations on my soul? ♪

♪ Lively piano playing ♪

Wealth, assets and
investments minus debt,

is peace of mind.

Wealth is what allows you to buy
a home in a safe neighborhood

with better-funded schools,

what allows you to send
your kids to college

without saddling them with debt,

and what enables you
to weather emergencies.

Wealth accumulates over time.

Seldom something we build
alone, it is often inherited.

And in this country, Black
people, more than any other group,

have been systematically deprived
of building generational wealth.

More than 50 years since the bloody
and brutally repressed protests

and freedom struggles
of Black Americans

brought about the end
of legal discrimination,

so much of what makes
Black lives hard,

what takes Black lives earlier,

what steals opportunities,

is the lack of wealth that has been
a defining feature of Black life

since the end of sl*very.

And so, if we are truly serious
about creating a more just society,

we must get down
to the root of it.

We must talk about what is owed.

♪ Who'll pay
reparations on my soul? ♪

My
name is Jadon Relaford.

I'm from Riceboro, Georgia,

which is, um, it's
in Liberty County,

uh, southeast Georgia in
between Savannah and Brunswick.

I started JD's horse ranch,

and it's a place where we do
trail rides and we do lessons.

I initially started it because I wanted
to expose our people and our culture

to something different

than the typical things that they
say that we're supposed to be.

I think the main thing

that's actually holding me up
right now from growing my business

is having land,

being able to be on my own
property with my own horses.

Uh, right now, where I am, I have
to pay to keep my horses there.

Many Americans struggle
to achieve their dreams,

but what makes Jadon
Relaford's story so unjust

is that his family once had
land along the coast of Georgia

in a small secluded
community called Harris Neck.

Today, the community's land would
likely be worth more than $100 million.

But before Jadon was born, the
federal government took it.

And while he often visited
Harris Neck as a child,

that is a story that Jadon
only learned as an adult.

I first started hearing
about the land that was taken

probably about 15 years ago.

And I heard about that
directly from my grandmother,

by way of prayer
request in church.

I didn't really understand
what was going on,

but I do remember,
distinctively,

her asking for us to...
to keep that in prayer.

It wasn't until right before
my grandmother had passed away

where I really started to dig in

and... and get a better,
a deeper understanding

of what had happened to her,
um, as a child in Harris Neck.

W hen you arrive on the
Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge,

about an hour
outside of Savannah,

there's really no sign
of what it used to be.

It's lush and humid.

Birds and cicadas
provide the soundtrack.

But for the Harris Neck descendants
a few generations older than Jadon,

the memories of what was linger
just beneath the surface.

My
name is Wilson W. Moran.

And, uh, born in 1942
in a lean-to shack

on the side of the road,

outside of Harris Neck Road

after we were forced
off of Harris Neck.

In 1942, the federal
government cited eminent domain

when it told the
Harris Neck community

that the government needed their
land for the World w*r II effort.

So, tell me about this place.
- This is...

This is the
runway to the air base.

- So when the military came what
would have been here at that time?

What would we have seen if we
were here? - The houses.

Uh, the community.

Uh, a thriving community
of about 72 families

on 2,687 acres of land.

So, in this
desolate area now

would have been a bustling
community? WILSON: Of course, yes.

Children
playing... WILSON: Yes.

A post office. We had our own
school in walking distance.

Uh, own fire station.

We had everything here.

Olive W. Smith.

Age 94.

I finished the seventh
grade in Harris Neck.

I had to get up...

Had to get up in the
morning, feed them chickens,

and gather them plums.

That was my job
before I go to school.

I had to get up time
enough to do that.

Everybody was nice and
loving with each others.

And if you needed help,
they would help each others.

That's the way they was. Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Get in the field and work.

If they needed help,
they would help.

But almost overnight,

a loving and thriving community
that had taken decades to build

was scattered and destroyed.

- Harris Neck is a stunning
3,000 acres on the Georgia coast.

And to the 75 families
who used to live there,

it is the promised land.

Well, 40 years have gone by now,

and their promised land
has never been returned.

The Harris Neck folks have
tried and tried to go back home.

Harris
Neck descendants

have been fighting to get
their land back for decades,

a fight their parents and
grandparents struggled to wage.

- I still don't understand
why your folks would give up

without a fight.

- One reason would
be because, uh,

they've had total faith
in our government.

Uh, the other reason
is they are Black.

And in the '40s,

um, who, or why, or
how could they fight?

A Black
person... WILSON: Right.

- in Georgia...
- Exactly.

in the early
'40s... WILSON: Exactly.

had no weapons
with which to fight.

Exactly.

Harris Neck is just one
of countless Black communities

that, over the centuries,
have been taken or destroyed

by white terrorism
and government policy.

In New York, city officials seized
the Black enclave of Seneca Village

to make Central Park.

White mobs burned down
prospering Black towns

such as Wilmington, North
Carolina, and Rosewood, Florida,

and massacred their citizens.

Cities like Detroit and
Saint Paul, Minnesota,

ran highways through
Black neighborhoods

like Black Bottom and Rondo.

And in Harris Neck,
just like all the rest,

it is nearly impossible to calculate
the financial losses across generations.

They started in
sl*very. You had nothing.

You were a zero.

So, now you have these things,

so you begin to accumulate
and, uh, build wealth.

And, uh, build wealth for your
children and your grandchildren,

you know what I mean?

And all of a sudden, in...
in two weeks, it's gone.

Some families reportedly received
small payments from the government,

but they said they
were only a fraction

of what the land and
businesses were worth.

Others maintain they
got nothing at all.

For the people of Harris
Neck, owning their own land

symbolized the hope and the freedom
their enslaved ancestors had dreamed of.

And both Jadon and Wilson
can trace what they lost

directly to their
ancestor, Mustapha Shaw.

Mustapha's story is so remarkable
that it sounds more like lore.

Your great-grandfather was
a man born into sl*very,

gets his land at a time when Black people
are fighting just for basic rights.

So talk to me about... What...
What kind of person was he?

Well, you... you gotta
go back to why he ran away

and joined the Union Army.

- Uh-huh.
- It was something instilled in him

- that he wanted to be
a man. - Yes.

- And he wanted to be a
man to be reckoned with.

W hen we
talk about equality,

and what is owed
to Black Americans,

we must start with the fact that sl*very
and the Jim Crow era that followed

were, at their essence, systems
of economic exploitation.

Throughout his life, Mustapha Shaw
defiantly resisted those systems

in an effort to acquire
wealth for his family.

But even a near-mythical man
could not hold back the tide.

I often feel that,

when I'm doing other things, that
Mustapha is sitting on my shoulder,

saying, "Don't. You have other
stuff you should be doing.

You're supposed to be
telling people my story."

How did you
come across him?

- I was doing some research
for another project,

and I encountered
an arrest warrant.

- So you know that he was
a formerly enslaved man

by the time you find him in the records,
but what was his life before that?

According
to the family lore,

he was born to an enslaved Muslim
woman who was given the name Catherine.

He was enslaved on the Delegal
Plantation in McIntosh County

from which he escaped to
join the US Colored Troops.

Mustpaha Shaw was one of
approximately 200,000 Black men

who served in the Civil w*r.

Black soldiers made up
roughly 10% of the Union Army

and have been credited with
helping secure the Union victory

that ended the
scourge of sl*very.

We don't hear as much
about the enslaved people

who were escaping and
serving in the troops.

How much of a big deal
was it that he ran away,

um, not too far from where
he was being enslaved

to... to join this effort?

- To my mind, a very big deal.

What I discovered about Mustapha
Shaw and some of his compatriots

is that they tended to leave in groups of
three or four or five or six at a time.

So Mustapha and four of
his compatriots leave,

you know, one winter night when
they've got the right kind of moon

so they can see
where they're going,

and they take off and
head to the Union Army.

Mustapha fought for the
Union Army for nearly three years.

And in January 1865,

as the Civil w*r raged
to its final battle,

General William T.
Sherman attended a meeting

with a delegation
of Black leaders,

and he asked them, "What do
you want for your own people?"

Rev. Garrison Frazier, the
group's leader, made it clear:

"The way we can best
take care of ourselves

is to have land to turn
and till by our own labor."

Four days later, Sherman
issued Special Field Order 15,

calling for the
federal government

to seize as much as 400,000
acres from the Confederacy

and split it among the thousands
of newly emancipated people.

That order would become known
as "Forty acres and a mule."

And to this day,

it is the only real effort
this nation ever made

to compensate Black Americans
for 250 years of chattel sl*very.

But that effort didn't
even last a year.

Just months after Sherman's
order, Lincoln was assassinated.

His successor, Andrew Johnson,

a former sl*ve owner and
known white supremacist,

rescinded the order and
returned the confiscated land

to the same white men who
had fought against the Union.

And yet, at the same time the federal
government failed to make good

on its 40-acre promise
to Black Americans,

it began providing 160-acre
land grants to white Americans

and Europeans enticed to
immigrate to the country.

The policy was known
as The Homestead Act.

And from 1868 to 1934,

246 million acres, nearly
10% of the nation's land,

much of which was stolen
from indigenous people,

was given to white families.

It is estimated that there are more
than 46 million white Americans,

a quarter of the US population,

who are still the beneficiaries
of The Homestead Act.

These patterns of
explicit government policy

that helped white people

and largely excluded the formerly
enslaved and their descendants

would be repeated over
the next 100 years.

When the federal government stripped
the freed people of their land,

many were forced, once again, to
work for white people on plantations.

But Mustapha Shaw refused

and threatened those who were
returning to those plantations.

Ultimately, the federal government
issued a warrant for his arrest.

- And what's amazing about
the arrest warrant, um...

- This is it right here? ALLISON:
This is the arrest warrant.

They explain that they
are unable to retrieve him

because he meets them armed.

The text is...

- So he's ready for them?
- He's ready for them.

"Shaw then took with him one Pauldo
Brown, one Robert Delegal, one Lee Delegal

"and armed themselves
with three g*ns.

"And Shaw also had a
Bowie knife and a p*stol.

And all of the armed parties
threatened the officers."

So the image I create in my mind

is the knife in his teeth
and g*ns in both hands.

So I made him about 6' 3",

chocolate, very muscular,
and Idris Elba good-looking.

- Okay.

- The description from his
pension file was not that.

It was... Lenny Kravitz
good-looking? - It was...

- No.
- Oh, okay.

- It was, 5' 5 " or 5' 6",

sandy-haired and gray-eyed.

Complexion, light brown.

And, I had to sit
with myself a minute,

that my hero didn't match
my outsized imagination.

- Hmm. That's history, right?

Dr. Dorsey found Mustapha
in historical records again

when she discovered the 1868 deed for
land he had purchased in Harris Neck.

Land that ultimately got
passed down to his descendants.

Mustapha Shaw's
story represents, to me,

ferociousness, a determination to
live free on the part of Black men.

What Mustapha's
descendants are left with,

to me, is the spirit
of Mustapha, right?

But it's not wealth, it's
not material resources,

it is not what
Mustapha worked for.

And so, in that sense, it's a
reality of having been cheated.

After World w*r II,

when the federal government decided
it didn't need Harris Neck anymore,

they gave it to McIntosh County,
not to the families who'd owned it.

After the county
allowed the land

that had been so precious
to Mustapha's descendants

to be used for illicit gambling,
drag racing, and prostitution,

the federal government
took it back,

and in 1962, they turned
it into a wildlife refuge.

- The key word here
for me is trauma.

- Mm-hmm.

But, uh, we were
able to get through it.

But then you go to the cemetery,

you'll see a lot of our
people died in the '40s

because, uh, their hope,
their dreams, their freedom

were taken from them abruptly
and they could not recover.

sl*very, segregation, Jim Crow.

Bam!

So what am I gonna do?

I'm in my late age,
I... I may as well die.

- What is this community
owed for what happened?

- There's no, uh, there's... There's
not a price you can put on that,

uh, for the harm,

uh, the hurt,

uh, the dislocation of people.

But what I'm saying this is,
"You owe me my land back."

And, uh, you wanna talk about reparations,
then you'll talk about sl*very.

And we were enslaved also.

Reparations
is not a new idea.

Black Americans have been
fighting for various forms of it

from as early as the late 1700s.

Starting in 1783,

a formerly enslaved woman
named Belinda Sutton

filed several petitions to
the Massachusetts Legislature,

demanding a pension from the estate
of the man who once owned her.

Belinda Sutton won the case.

By the late 1890s,

Callie House, a formerly enslaved
washer woman from Tennessee,

organized hundreds of thousands
of formerly enslaved people

to push Congress to pass a
bill to provide sl*ve pensions,

just as it did for
Union soldiers.

The pensions would be
paid from the taxes

the federal government had
collected on sl*ve-grown cotton.

The audacity of a Black woman demanding
payment for the stolen labor of her people

brought down the full wrath
of the federal government.

Despite the fact that
there was no evidence,

no witnesses, and
no named victims,

Callie House was convicted of mail
fraud and served a year in prison.

The case for reparations
began with sl*very,

but it does not end there.

After sl*very ended, Black
Americans were subjected

to nearly a century of violently enforced
economic and political subordination

that prevented them
from building wealth.

Decade after decade, the unpaid
debt has continued to accrue.

When the
federal government

burned and bulldozed the
people of Harris Neck

out of their homes
and businesses,

many left rural
Georgia all together.

♪ ...will
serve until I die ♪

♪ I am on the
b*ttlefield for my Lord ♪

♪ Lord, there's a young
man here with me ♪

♪ He needs... ♪

A lot of
people move away.

Some went up north, some went
to Savannah, some went Florida.

They went different
places, mm-hmm.

They took their family
up north where they was.

Yeah.

Yes. There.

The torrent of Black
migrants out of the South

would be called the
Great Migration.

And at its essence, the
historic movement was a quest

to collect on the unmet
promises of the Civil w*r.

A search for physical,
emotional, and economic freedom.

A freedom that did not seem
possible in the apartheid South

in places like the Whittington Plantation,
just outside of Greenwood, Mississippi,

where my family is from.

My
name is Sylvester Hoover,

and I was born in 1957 on
the Whittington Plantation.

And I'm a deacon here
at Little Zion MB Church

where we are today.

If you was Black in
the Mississippi Delta,

we was always feared that somebody
going to come and do something to us.

If you didn't honor white peoples back
in those days, you could get lynched.

You could get a year in jail.

You could end up getting thrown
into the Tallahatchie River.

At the heart of the brutal
violence of the Jim Crow South

was political and
economic control.

Within years of emancipation,

Black Americans were largely
barred from land ownership.

As a result, they were forced into
another system of coerced labor

known as sharecropping,

where they worked the
land owned by white people

for an alleged
share of the crops.

We was,
uh, sharecroppers.

That means the boss
man buy the seeds

and we worked the land
to produce the cotton.

But the only thing that we
never could make a profit.

They never let us
get out of debt

because we got everything
from the commissary

and we didn't keep any books

and you couldn't dispute whatever
the person... the boss man says.

That mean you can't
leave the plantation.

It's just like you're a sl*ve.

Many Black Southerners

were forced to sign labor
contracts with white landowners,

and sharecropping trapped
hundreds of thousands,

including my own family,

in generational poverty.

- And your father was born
on this plantation, right?

- That's what I was told
by my Aunt Charlotte.

She said, somewhere out
there in a little shack,

my father was born...
- And so was I.

- in the middle of
the cotton plantation.

- During that time,

I'd say, they probably
had, I would say,

2,000 people on this plantation.
- Wow.

- And when I grew up here
in the '50s and '60s,

we had 660 peoples
on this plantation.

Wow.

My family sharecropped on
the Whittington Plantation

for at least three generations.

And both of my great-grandparents
are buried there.

- We'll just have to
walk right around here.

- Is some snakes over here?

Uh, no,
they... they over there.

How you know?

What you talking
about? I'ma let you go first.

- See, this is Percy Paul.
- Mmm.

That's
Percy Paul right there.

1885, died 1972.

And Percy Paul,

he was the first person I know
to have a cab for Black people.

And he would bring
Black peoples back home

when they go to town
and buy their grocery.

He had two cars
on his cab stand,

and he would charge people money
to bring them back out here

with their grocery.
- So you...

You taught me this,
because I never knew

that my great-grandfather
owned a little cab company.

- Yep, he did.

- That's kind of amazing.
- He did, and it was famous.

It was famous 'cause, see,

it was, uh, the Black Cab Company
and the Collin's Shoe Shop,

them the only two
buildings on Johnson Street

were ran by Black peoples.

Wow. So when we drove from
Baptist Town across the river...

Right.

and then we were in that
splendid white part of town...

Yep.

and all of that wealth
was built by our ancestors...

Yep.

who don't share any
of it. SYLVESTER: Right.

But, see, that's the
way it were here.

I mean, it was...
it was like that

up until '71, '72,
up in that area

before we could see
any change here,

because change here in
the Delta comes slow.

My grandmother,
Arlena Paul Tillman,

couldn't wait for that change.

In the 1940s, she packed
up her few belongings,

two kids in tow, and joined
the flood of Black Southerners

hoping to find the
Northern promised land.

Grandmamma, as we called her,

got off the Illinois Central
Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa.

But there would be no
promised land for her.

She would instead find both
old prejudices and new ones,

in federal policy designed to keep
Black people from building wealth.

We struggled
vainly to regain our bearings

while depression, fear, and
failure stalked the nation.

The Great Depression
toppled the US economy.

At its height, the
nation's unemployment rate

soared above 25%.

The entire banking
system had collapsed,

factories were closing, and
families were losing homes.

In an effort to revive
the spiraling economy,

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
enacted the New Deal in 1933.

- You saw an expansion
of government

like we've never seen before.

Many of the programs that we
know to be entitlements today

were established
during the New Deal.

We were subsidizing,
um, farmers,

Social Security was established,

unemployment insurance
was established.

There was a swelling of
government interventions

that actually had a significant impact,
a positive impact, on the economy.

Now, that sounds great.

But Black people were largely
shut out of the New Deal.

In a compromise
with white Southerners,

Roosevelt agreed to exclude
farm workers and domestics

out of critical social
safety net programs

like Social Security and
unemployment insurance.

That exclusion left out
60% of all Black workers.

Basic problems,
unemployment, and the right to organize

were still unsettled.

The New Deal also
empowered American labor unions.

The Wagner Act ensured workers
the right to organize and strike,

and as a result, working
conditions improved

and wages increased.

But those unions often barred
Black workers from joining,

keeping Black Americans
from many of the benefits

white Americans had gained.

- You know, in many ways,
the New Deal represented

the first affirmative action
policy for white people.

That... it said, "Hey,
when you're suffering,

"we're going to not
only remedy that,

we're gonna provide security for you
and your families for the future."

Now a... a significant
portion of that,

where it really showed
up in the New Deal

was housing policy.

The Home Owners'
Loan Corporation,

a federal agency founded
under the New Deal,

adopted segregated housing
policies from local municipalities

and created a national system
that used color-coded maps

to tell banks which
loans it would insure.

The federal government marked the most
desirable areas for lending in green.

Blue stood for still desirable.

Yellow indicated areas
that were declining.

And a bright red marked
anywhere Black Americans lived

or even lived nearby as
too hazardous to lend to.

This practice, created
by the federal government

and adopted by lenders as well
as cities, was called redlining.

The federal government created these
maps in 239 cities across the country.

Redlining
was not a evaluation tool

based upon the quality
of the housing.

It was based upon the share of
Black people in the neighborhood.

So there were roadblocks
at every step of the way,

preventing Black people, um, from
gaining wealth and opportunity

and... and... and, more
importantly, from gaining power.

98% of the loans

the Federal Housing
Administration insured

from 1934 to 1962 went
to white Americans,

excluding nearly all Black Americans
out of the government program

credited with building the
modern American middle class.

43% of my hometown was redlined.

And when my grandmother arrived
to Waterloo from Mississippi,

she moved into the segregated
east side of the city

and took the jobs that were
most available to Black women,

whether they lived in
the north or the south:

she cleaned.

One of the things that
Dad told me about,

we used to talk about how the family
ended up migrating up to Waterloo,

was that Grandmamma told him
when they were very little...

- They wouldn't
be picking cotton.

- She decided they weren't gonna pick cotton.
- Yeah.

- That... That was too hard
of a life for her kids.

- She'd been through that.

So she wouldn't... Wouldn't
wanna send her kids

through the same thing
she's been through.

- I think about this a lot.
- Mmm.

Uh, Grandmamma
getting on that train...

- Yeah, yeah.

- Leaving the South...
- Right.

- cleaning white people's
houses, cleaning the courthouse.

- Yeah, yeah.
- I remember, uh, me and Dad would go down there

- and she'll be cleaning the front doors.
- Washing the windows. Yep.

- And I remember how people would
walk past her like she was invisible,

like she was just nothing.
- Yeah. That's how it is.

That's how it was back here.

Yeah, it's
kind of amazing

to think of... Of a woman
with two young children

to leave behind
everything she knew,

because she was determined to
build a better life for her family.

Despite the odds,
by the mid-1960s,

my grandmamma's dream of a
better life for her children

seemed to be coming true.

Her oldest son, Nashuel
Hannah, had graduated college

and with his help,

she had managed to purchase an
old Victorian in East Waterloo.

So let's talk about
330 Irving Street,

which was the only
house I ever remember...

That's right, that's right.
uh, Grandmamma livin' in.

Everybody
was secure there.

As far as the house,

- that was the only thing
she had. - Yeah.

It was the house.

I mean, I remember she had
the garden in the back of the house,

and then she had that
plot of land over...

- She fed us and
the neighborhood.

330 Irving Street
was a worn Victorian

in a distressed,
redlined neighborhood.

But for me and my
family, it was home,

a symbol of all my grandmamma,

a Black woman born into
the apartheid South

with just a fourth-grade
education, was able to accomplish.

From the moment we
were brought here in bondage,

Black life in this country
has been defined by hard work.

And our labor has
generated success stories

that deserve to be celebrated.

But these cases
camouflage the truth,

that life for so many Black Americans
continues to be defined by struggle.

Today, Black people remain the most
segregated group in the country,

and are around five times
as likely as white Americans

to live in high-poverty
neighborhoods.

And it's not just because Black
Americans are more likely to be poor.

Black families
earning $75,000 or more a year

live in poorer neighborhoods

than white Americans earning
less than $40,000 a year.

And housing opportunities as a whole
are decreasing for Black Americans.

In fact, while every other group has
experienced a rise in homeownership,

Black homeownership is the
lowest it's been in a decade.

Hello, Dr. Darity, thank you for
agreeing to talk to me today.

Um, it's been a long journey

since the first time we met

when I was just a... a graduate
student here in... in North Carolina.

- Yeah. Yeah. It's
been quite a while.

It's been...
It's been a journey.

So we live in a vastly
unequal country.

Um, all Americans are suffering from
the inequality in the United States.

But when we look at
the racial wealth gap,

it's... it's a cavern.

Talk about some of
those statistics.

- I think one of the most telling
statistics is the following:

uh, Black Americans whose ancestors
were enslaved in the United States

constitute about 12% of
the nation's population

but have less than 2%
of the nation's wealth.

In contrast,
white Americans

constitute about 60%
of the population

but hold nearly 90% of
the nation's wealth.

- And so, yes, we have a
maldistribution of wealth,

uh, across the
entire population,

but there's a particularly
stark maldistribution

that's associated with
race in the United States.

When the idea of
reparations is presented

as an instrument for
equality in this country,

the work of Martin Luther King Jr.
And the larger Civil Rights Movement

are cited as proof that equality
by law has been achieved

and so nothing else is needed.

But making school segregation ill*gal
did little to repay Black families

for generations of being
denied access to education.

Making unemployment
discrimination ill*gal

did not come with a
check for Black Americans

for the jobs they
were barred from,

the promotions they didn't get.

The Fair Housing Act prohibited
discrimination in housing

but did not reset real estate
values in redlined communities.

In the end, civil rights legislation
merely guaranteed Black people

rights they should
have already had.

It did nothing to correct
the harm that had been done,

and had not a shred of impact
on the racial wealth gap

that has largely remained
unchanged since King was m*rder*d.

So much of the way that we talk
about, um, the lack of wealth

in Black communities
and in Black families

really centers on this
narrative of Black dysfunction.

So I'm just going to say
each of these arguments,

and then I want you to tell
me what is the reality.

Um, does marriage close the racial
wealth gap for Black Americans?

- Apparently not.

Uh, we know now that
the average white family

that's a single-parent family

has about two times the wealth
of the average Black family

that has two parents.

- So cross that off.
- Yeah.

- Um, does, uh, going to college close
the racial wealth gap for Black Americans?

- Well, I'm definitely a
fan of going to college...

- As am I.
- but it doesn't close the racial wealth gap.

Uh, a Black head of household
with a college degree

has two-thirds of the net worth
of a white head of household

who never finished high school.

- Cross that off.
- Yeah.

Uh, what
about savings?

Black people should just stop
buying Jordans and save their money.

- Yeah.
- And if they did that,

if they saved all their money
and, and were better savers,

they could close the
racial wealth gap.

- Right, so if... if Black people
weren't so attracted to bling,

we'd eliminate the
racial wealth gap.

Well, the evidence suggests
that that's not true either.

Uh, if anything,

uh, if we were to take into account
the income of the household,

Black households save as
much as white households.

And in fact, in some
income categories,

Black households actually
have a higher savings rate

than white households.

- So if the actual facts
don't back up this notion

that Black people just need
to change our behavior,

and we could eliminate, um, the wealth
gap between Black and white Americans,

why are these myths
so persistent?

- Well, I think part of
it is, uh, ignorance.

Uh, I think that people have
misperceptions about a number of things

and, uh, some of these misperceptions
are... are about American history.

Similarly, I think people
have misperceptions

about the sources of
the racial wealth gap.

Lack of wealth in
Black families too often means

that the hard-earned
successes of one generation

don't translate to the next.

There's still a big family rift

over what happened to
Grandmamma's house after she died,

but in the end, there
wasn't enough money

to live, send kids to
college, and keep it up.

Over the years, it
fell into disrepair,

and eventually, the property
was seized by the city

and a lifetime of
memories bulldozed away.

All of the hopes and dreams my
grandmamma carried on that train

from Mississippi to Waterloo,

couldn't contend with the harsh
racial realities of this country.

A defining feature of
Black life in America

is that there seldom ever
exists a margin for error.

And there's no amount
of work or ambition

that can make up for the chasm

that is the racial wealth
gap in this country.

- ♪ And then he will
direct your path ♪

♪ Ain't the Lord all right? ♪

♪ We thank God this morning ♪

♪ And may he never ♪

♪ Did you hear me, church? ♪

Harris Neck's first
African Baptist Church

was the only building
to be salvaged

when the federal government
razed the community in 1942.

The community was able to
dismantle and rebuild the church

to where it stands today.

And the current reverend,
Edgar Timmons Jr.,

is the grandson of
the man who saved it.

My family
have been in this area over 125 years.

It started with our grandfather,
uh, William Timmons.

He built and operated the
oyster factory for years.

For years, employing from 35 to
48, um, members of the community

during the oyster season.

In the early 1970s,

Reverend Timmons, Wilson Moran, and
other descendants of Harris Neck

began to meet to discuss
their birthright.

We all got
together, talked about it.

Wait a minute, you
know, we went overseas,

putting our life on the line,

serving our country with
pride and... and honor.

And, um, here was our homeland, our
heritage, locked behind a fence.

So Elliot Campbell, Chris McIntosh,
Wilson Moran, and my... myself,

we called a meeting.

- So this is 1971.

That's when the Harris
Neck movement started.

So we started, uh, talking
to anybody who would hear us,

that we want our land back.

They formed a group called
The People Organized for Equal Rights,

and by 1979, they
made a bold decision.

- We met and decided that it
was time to move back home.

And whatever
happened, it happened.

More than a dozen
people came to Harris Neck,

to land, they said, the
government took from them

during World w*r II
to build an airstrip.

They said the government promised
to return the land they once farmed,

but instead, created
a wildlife refuge.

So the families came back to
take what they claim was theirs.

One of the
greatest days of my life.

We gonna stay here until
we die! - Amen.

This is ours. WOMAN: Amen.

- This is my testimony.

♪ Jesus, he will never... ♪

We were asking for the
return of the property

and reparation of $50 million to
re-establish our... our community.

Really, you know,
feeling very justified

because the community
was destroyed,

people were displaced,

hearts and lives were destroyed.

After a week or so,

uh, the federal government
said "We got enough of this."

So they told us
that we had to leave

or face jail.

We said, "Well,

"um, if that's the case, then
we would just be arrested,"

because we were
not going to leave.

We were home, you know,
where we belonged.

Our hearts were racing.

I'd never been to
jail in my life.

Members of the group were
sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Undeterred, in 1980, they filed a
lawsuit against the federal government.

But the judge ruled that the
statute of limitations had run out

and that because the federal
government owned the land,

only an act of Congress
could give it back.

In total,

the People Organized for Equal Rights
introduced four bills to Congress

but all died in committee.

By the mid-1980s,

the organization had run out of money
and the fight came to a standstill.

- Just imagine if... if, um,

if the government never
took the property,

um, where we would
have been now.

Our grandfather's oyster
factory would've been...

Would've been handed down to us.

Yes, our family is still
in the oyster business.

But what Granddaddy had
for us to take off with,

once he handed it down to us,

uh, is no... There's
no comparison.

Comparison, none. None.

So, um...

we... we feel like there should
be some reparation, um, granted.

It's only the right thing to do.

The modern-day fight for
reparations is often traced to 1987

with the formation of the National Coalition
of Blacks for Reparations in America

or N'COBRA.

- Reparations is an
opportunity for us

to decide as a people
what is required

to remove the impediments that
are the result of sl*very.

The whole
concept of reparations,

we get into a non-dialogue.

Silence.

In 1989,

the late representative John Conyers
of Michigan introduced Bill HR-40,

calling for a federal committee
to study the case for reparations

for Black Americans
descended from sl*very.

Conyers would go on to introduce the
bill every year for the next 30 years

until his retirement in 2018.

He died in 2019 without the bill
ever making it out of committee.

Still, the call for
reparations remains,

and captured the national
spotlight in 2021

when the last survivors
of the Tulsa m*ssacre

testified in Congress.

- I still see Black
businesses being burned,

I still hear airplanes
flying overhead.

I hear the screams.

I have lived through
the m*ssacre every day.

Our country may forget
this history, but I cannot.

The testimony
symbolized the core truth

that justice has not been
realized in this country.

We all know people who have done,
quote-unquote, "everything right."

People who have done all of the things
that society has said they should do,

they still have no wealth.

This is the reality of why you
are calling for reparations.

- Because that's the only significant way
that we can close the racial wealth gap.

- So the extraction
of generational wealth

has to be remedied by
a transfer of wealth.

- The federal government's policies
created the racial wealth gap.

And so the federal
government has an obligation

to take the steps to eliminate
the racial wealth gap.

- Why is this controversial?

It just seems like it makes both
moral sense but also logical sense.

- I think that there is
a historic resistance

to any set of policies that
would give Black Americans

the conditions for full citizenship.
- Mm-hmm.

- And this resistance is a consequence
of the legacy of the Confederacy.

- So if we base the case for reparations
off of the racial wealth gap,

what is the total amount
that would be owed?

- If we use the racial
wealth gap as our standard,

each individual should
receive about $350,000.

Since there are 40 million Black
American descendants of US sl*very

out of a total of 45 million
Black people in the United States,

that would mean that the... the total bill
would be approximately $14 trillion now.

Okay. Yeah.

- That's a big number.

- Yeah. There're...
There're bigger numbers.

- Is there?
- Yeah.

- It's a big debt though.
- It is a big debt.

But, uh, you know, I've
seen estimates of the bill

that have run as high as
6.2 quadrillion dollars.

So... you know?

- Yeah, I do think it's
helpful to think...

- Fourteen trillion might be letting,
you know, America off a little bit easy.

- I mean, uh, pretty much
any number you put on it

would be letting America
off easy, probably.

Despite the lack of political
support for reparations,

there has been some
change in public sentiment

over the last few decades.

The activity,
really, that's promising

is these efforts at local
reparations for cities.

What we're seeing in Evanston,
Asheville, Maryland and others

are saying, "You know what?

"We had a role in discriminating
against Black people.

We're gonna offer some
form of reparations."

- The Chicago suburb is set to
become the first city in America

to fund reparations for
some of its Black residents.

A prime piece of
Manhattan Beach real estate

was taken from a Black family
by the City of Manhattan Beach.

Los Angeles County gave the
property back to their descendants.

- It's surreal.

And it's almost like being transported
to the other side of the known universe.

- Now those efforts
will never be comparable

to the federal government,
um, redressing the injuries

caused by sl*very and Jim Crow
racism and housing discrimination.

But we can create a
reparative culture

by creating local
reparations programs

that work their way up to
the federal government.

Leading up
to the 2020 election,

reparations became a talking
point on the campaign trail.

Where do you stand
on the issue of reparations?

- It is the... It
is the original sin.

The truth of the matter is that I,
from the time I've gotten involved,

I've been trying to do things

that deal with the systemic
racism that still exists.

- When Biden was on
the campaign trail,

and he was struggling,

it was Black issues that
allowed him to rise up.

And especially those moments
where this campaign was at its lowest ebb,

the African-American community
stood up again for me!

- You've always had my
back, and I'll have yours.

- Now you start to see them
start to go by the wayside.

These issues of wealth
equality are central

to white politicians
getting elected.

It should be central in the
legislative packages they deliver.

The Biden Administration
has publicly supported

the study of reparations,

but has yet to make any
significant movement beyond that.

And neither President Biden
nor Vice President Harris

were willing to
sit down with us.

In 2021, HR-40, now led by Representative
Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas,

finally made it
out of committee.

But whenever the issue of
reparations bubbles to the surface,

Republicans in power have made
it clear where they stand.

- Yeah, I... I don't think reparations
for something that happened 150 years ago,

for whom none of us currently living
are responsible, is a good idea.

I just, uh, I just think
we're so far removed from the event.

- I don't think any... any
person, Black or white,

is responsible for what someone else,
Black or white, did 150 years ago.

And, uh, I think most Americans
feel the same way I do.

And while some
politicians are eager to shut down

any conversation
concerning reparations,

they are not as
willing to discuss

how their own families
benefited from sl*very.

This viewpoint ignores that debt
is inherited, just like wealth,

and also that reparations
is not just about sl*very,

but about decades of
government-backed legal apartheid

deployed against the
descendants of the enslaved.

What are the odds that we will
ever see a reparations bill

or, um...

law passed that allows
for this to happen?

- I have no idea when or if
this will actually happen.

Approximately 30 years ago,

when I was a reparations skeptic

and... and had my, uh,
road to Damascus moment

and became a
reparations advocate,

I decided that I would do that
regardless of how low the odds were,

because this is absolutely
the right thing to do.

And it's the only way in which we could
eliminate this enormous racial wealth gap.

- I know you hear this

where white
Americans are saying,

"Why should we have
to pay reparations?"

And they're taking this
idea of reparations

as, uh, an individual debt that
white Americans are having to pay,

but that's not the case.

- The federal government would
pay the reparations bill.

So it's not a matter of taking a
dollar out of a white person's pocket

and putting it into a
Black person's pocket.

It's a matter of the federal
government financing it

in the same way that it financed, uh,
the expenditures for the stimulus package

for, uh, the great recession

and the way in which it has
financed the American CARES Act

and the American Rescue Plan,

which is essentially
to spend the money

but without raising taxes.

- I mean, if anything, uh, the
Black experience teaches you,

is you have to have
room to believe

that the impossible can
be made manifest, right?

- Absolutely. I mean,
if... if it was 1819,

uh, we probably would think that the
odds of sl*very ever coming to an end

were extremely low,

but does that mean we
shouldn't have fought

to try to end sl*very?

And so, similarly, I think
reparations is the right thing.

It... It's a debt that's
overdue for 156 years.

It needs to be paid.

And we need to struggle
to have it happen.

Generation
after generation,

our elders pass on without
knowing the justice

their elders hoped to
see in their lifetime.

Ms. Olive Smith, and Ms.
Mary Moran, Wilson's mother,

were two of the last surviving
members of Harris Neck,

and they didn't live long
enough to see justice served.

Both died during the
making of this documentary.

And while it's been a decade

since Ms. Anna Overstreet, Jadon
Relaford's grandmother, passed,

what she suffered
is still with him.

She grew up her
whole life living with that,

with that pain, with that hurt.

The part that really,
really bothers me

is that she died not
having that land back.

I'm happy that, you
know, she's buried there,

but I would've been more happy

if she was able to have that
land when she was still alive.

When I think of restitution,

first thing that comes to my
mind, generally, is correction.

Uh, righting a wrong,

as it relates to what
happened in Harris Neck.

What it looks like for
me is returning the land.

The fight has
continued in Harris Neck,

but it will still take an act
of Congress to return the land.

And so far, there has
been very little movement.

How often do you come out here?

Well, uh,
maybe once a month,

I come here to talk
to my ancestors,

and let them know that we are
still here and we're still fighting

and we have not given up hope.

And long as there's life,
we're gonna have hope.

Do you think they
will be proud of you?

Of course.
They already are.

- And how does
that make you feel?

- Just about what I feel now.

And I can't put that into words.

It might
be hard to imagine

what Black life would
be like in this country

if we were to close
the racial wealth gap.

But everywhere we look,

there are indicators of how
fragile things can be if we do not.

Black Americans, along
with indigenous people,

remain the most
neglected beneficiaries

of the America that would
not exist without us.

This unacknowledged debt,
all of it, is still accruing.

And it will continue to accrue

until we, as a society,
decide to take action.

We cannot change the hypocrisy
upon which we were founded.

We cannot make up for
all of the lives lost

and dreams snatched,

for all the suffering endured.

But we can atone for it.

We can acknowledge the crime.

It is time for this
country to pay the debt

it began incurring
400 years ago,

when it first decided that human beings
could be purchased and held in bondage.

What happened in
1619 set in motion

the defining struggle
of American life

between freedom and oppression,

equality and racism,

between ideals of democracy and
the fight to make them real.

We must confront this 400-year
w*r between these opposing forces

and then we must make a choice

about which America we
want to build for tomorrow.

We must, finally, live up
to the magnificent ideals

upon which we were founded.