A Binding Truth

- [Coach] Guys!

[players yelling] [upbeat music] [whistle trills] Let's go!

Hey, how you feel?

- [Players] Good!

- Now how you feel?

- Good!

- [Coach] We got five star jacks on three.

Is everybody ready?

- [Players] Hey!

- All right!

- Hey!

- 3-14- - Some things never change, you know?

- Hut!

[players grunt] - Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

- Set, hut!

- But I'm a realist, so I dream.

I dream about those days.

[whistle trills] [upbeat music] - [Andy] Jimmie Lee had the moves, he had the swagger.

- He was a instant phenomenon.

- That's the next Jim Brown, right there.

[gentle upbeat music] - When he got the ball, the game became electric.

[spectators cheering] Jimmie was a rock star in my high school.

[spectators groan] When he walked down the hall, I'd just go.

- [Announcer] Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick became the first Black football star at a predominantly white high school in Charlotte, and the second figure in the 1965 civil rights lawsuit.

Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick is most known for scoring 19 touchdowns and earning numerous awards, all while experiencing hostility on the field and in the community.

[audience applauding] - [Presenter] Please welcome Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick.

[audience applauding and cheering] - [Coach] Okay, guys.

- I have a story that started out as a sports story that moved into a civil rights story, that moved into a genealogical slave history story.

[soft somber music] Scoring touchdowns and running football was easy for me, you know?

This is not easy.

It's difficult to have dialogue about slavery and about race.

Many black folks in this country struggles with this issue of slavery in terms of trying to understand, and get through the anger, and just the feeling of waste and loss, to the point that, you know, many people in my family, that "Why are you doing this?

Why are you trying to bring these things up?"

I needed to know.

[solemn music] [bird shrieking] [slow solemn music] I grew up in Grier Town, which is a very isolated community, just outside the city limits, at the time.

[slow solemn music] Grier Town was kind of in the middle.

It was an island with the main roads that ran around Grier Town to get to Charlotte.

I can remember as a kid, you know, as my great-grandfather, Grandpa Jim, all these old men, they'd be laughing about old times and what they used to do at old times and kid each... And then there were other times and then they would be crying and praying because of the struggles that they had.

And I was a very mischievous boy, you know?

And I was always picking on my sisters.

And church was a big part of our lives.

[solemn music] See if I can get this right here.

- [Interviewer] How would you describe the race relations in Charlotte over the past 30 or so years?

- [Irma] Now, this integration, it wasn't just people.

It was a higher authority behind it to make people accept each other.

I can sit here and hate your guts, you know?

But the love of God can come in and make you really accept your fellow man.

And this is God's doing.

- Amen, Mom.

My mother was the youngest of 18 children.

Her father was a minister, and so she grew up with this understanding of ministering.

Drunks would come to the door, knock on their doors late at night.

"Miss Irma, I'm just really struggling.

Can you pray for me?

Or can you-" - Pray?

- Can you say me some- - They weren't begging for money, they wanted prayer.

- No, dead right.

And she would just talk to 'em- - She would pray for them.

- And pray with them, thank you, and send 'em on their way.

- She would come at nighttime and wake me up.

"The Lord gave me a song!"

And there she would sit down and she'd start this, and she'll start singing her song.

Lord [group chanting] Lord, I went to the church and I saw her Lord, I - And I told Mama, I said, "Do you ever leave me, throw me down your dimples and your voice to sing."

She left me with her heart trouble, her high blood pressure, her diabetes, all that.

[gentle slow bright music] - [Arthur] Watch your step.

- Wow.

- Oh!

[laughing] - Oh my.

- Okay.

[laughing] Hey?

[laughing] - Oh!

It's still there.

It's still there, Griff.

It is still there.

- I told you.

[laughing] Can you imagine?

- Even the lockers.

- Haven't changed.

Haven't changed.

- Now.

- Haven't changed.

- Here I know- - You'll find your locker.

Okay.

- I can go right to my locker- - You can go.

[laughing] - Because it was this one.

It was the bottom one.

- On the bottom.

- I'd always leave it open when the showers- - The showers, right, okay.

- Were working, it'd be a mess right here, you know.

[Arthur laughing] This is outrageous.

Look where we are.

- Hey look, look.

- Where we are.

- And just turn around.

- Just.

- Man, you remember this?

- Oh, look at this.

- Do I?

- [Arthur] Oh, look at it.

Really beautiful.

- It really is.

We used to take the team football photos- - [Arthur] Right in front of the bleachers- - Yeah.

- Right over there.

Gimme that old Second Ward spirit Second Ward spirit Gimme that old Gimme that old Second Ward spirit Second Ward spirit Gimme that old Gimme that old Second Ward spirit Second Ward spirit It's good enough for me It's good enough for me - Hey!

[both laughing] - [Jimmie] Word for word.

- Jimmie belonged to us.

He was a member of our class doing miracles out there on that football field.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools were still segregated.

You still had, by law, a Black school system and white school systems.

At the same time, they were also looking for African American students to transfer to a white school.

Something called freedom of choice.

And as old as I am today, I can remember the discussion of, "Why'd this white coach Gus Purcell come over here and take our very best player to go to Myers Park?"

[gentle solemn music] - Myers Park wanted Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick because he was talented and they wanted to win football games.

[soft gentle solemn music] To lose Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, an unusual generational talent, was a blow to the Black community itself.

- [Interviewer] How would you describe things when he decided to transfer from Second Ward to Myers Park?

- [Irma] Jim had a lot of questions about it and he asked me what I thought about it.

Well, in this world, if there's a opportunity offered to you, it's time to move up.

- My issue was, if they don't like me, they're not gonna block for me.

There's all these things about my future and you know, "I'm not gonna get a scholarship and I'm gonna flunk out," and all, you know, all these fears, you know?

And just social.

This was a time when the only kind of relationships you had with white people were working for them.

And it usually weren't very positive.

It was always, I felt from a sort of a position of inferiority of this idea that, you know, they are better, you know?

And that is, that for me has been something that I've had to really try to get a grasp on and try to understand.

[soft bright music] That was a tumultuous time, because most of the kids who had a choice to go to Myers Park, and several of them were on the football team at Second Ward, "We're going.

All for one and one for all.

We're all gonna do this."

And as the deadline got closer to making the decision, it turned out, you know, I was one of few, that I almost thought, "I'm not sure if I can really do this."

- [Irma] I had always taught him to love.

I never taught him to hate.

So I tried to warn him.

I said, "Now there's gonna be some fighting and some misunderstanding.

You get that in Second Ward.

You know?

If people mistreat you, you don't strike out and feel like you're there to defend yourself in that manner.

You're just a child going to school, trying to get a good education.

Don't feel like they're out just because you're Black.

They're out because you are you."

[Jimmie chuckles] - Yeah.

[soft solemn music] - Everybody at Second Ward was disappointed for the simple reason that we could have had another state championship.

Some of the football players, they say, "Oh man, he done sold out for a pair of khakis and an alpaca sweater."

[lively upbeat music] - [De] When the football season started, he was a instant phenomenon.

- [Jimmie] The majority of the schools I played were predominantly white.

And I had two things going against me.

I was Black and I was the star player, so they had double reason to try to stop me.

- Jimmie had a stiff arm.

He was stiff-arming, and nobody could bring that stiff arm down.

- Oftentimes I'd get punched, you know, when you're down in the crowd, words were said, you would get spat on, intimidation, you know, it was a part of the game.

And that's how I grew up playing.

[lively upbeat music] [all cheering] - Jimmie and I had gone to high school together.

We had the same last name.

We'd pass each other in the hallway and go, "Hey, Cuz, how's it going?"

[gentle upbeat music] - Gary Schwab and David Scott had done this tremendous three-part series.

It was kinda like, "Wow, this is fascinating."

To find out what had happened to him, 'cause I kinda wondered.

[soft gentle upbeat music] Jimmie called me after the email got to him, and he asked me what the H stands for.

And I said, "Hugh."

And then I got a gift.

Jimmie said to me over the phone, "I know a lot about your family."

And he began to tell me about my great-great-grandfather, whom I'm named after, owning his great-great-great grandfather, revealing to me my ancestral history of slave hold, which I knew nothing about.

[soft somber music] It changed my life.

[somber music] I was really dumbfounded.

How could something so significant to who I am- [somber music] have never been revealed?

[somber music continues] Like, it's like the floor fell open and I slid down into the past.

[soft somber music] - This story is very much heart and soul of what happened in America, from 1619 forward.

And that is, Black people were owned by white people who gave Black people their last names.

[gentle solemn music] - When my mother passed, I came home.

I lived out on the West coast.

Something just kind of hit me about my family.

I didn't know very much about my ancestors.

[gentle solemn music] [gentle solemn music continues] Growing up, I never thought of myself, or my name, as slave-connected.

I never really thought, "Oh, Kirkpatrick, oh.

Yeah, Kirkpatrick is a slave name."

Those are things that no one really put together, you know?

So this was in, like, 2003 when I first posted it.

There was a website, old Mecklenburg historical website, and I just wrote a little statement saying I was looking for information on the Kirkpatrick family.

[keyboard keys clacking] Years went by.

It wasn't till about 2007, a historian at Winthrop College, she sent me some information about the Kirkpatrick family, Black Kirkpatricks and white Kirkpatricks.

I found out who owned my family and during slavery.

[gentle slow dramatic music] [gentle slow dramatic music continues] - This whiteboard is a work in progress.

It's a Black and white American family tree.

It starts where slavery starts in the south in my family, with John, my great-grandfather times four, who moved from Ireland to the colonies through the Port of Charleston.

1790 census, first census, shows John owning three slaves.

But then when you dig into the material, you find out that he actually owned 14 enslaved people.

Oftentimes the enslaved people are not referred to by name.

They're just referred to as servant or slave.

And it drops down to the next generation.

This is John's son, Thomas.

And the slaves that Thomas owned.

They'd give people, just like they would give a wagon or a horse or a chest of drawers, or something like that, it was all chattel.

And then the next generation takes us down to my great great-grandfather Hugh, whom I'm named for.

And this was where Jimmie connected to his family, because Hugh owned Jimmie's great-great-great grandfather.

[gentle dramatic music] It captures the historic truth about the relationship between the white and Black Kirkpatricks, that we have been building off of for five years.

- I initially looked at De as a resource, you know?

This was another step for me.

- [Announcer] Good evening, Tigers.

- [Jimmie] It has turned into more than that.

- I've had some fellow southerners say to me, "You're pretty naive, aren't ya?"

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- [De] We took our story out into community.

- Good evening friends.

[audience applauding] - It's a story that's an American story.

It's a southern story.

- I grew up with Jimmie Lee, snotty nose and barefooted.

We all were country boys.

We all played football.

We played in cow pastures.

We didn't play on no pretty green grass.

- [De] Jimmie, he's a great companion to have for this journey.

A tremendous partner, in that way.

[wind whooshing] [insects chirping] [birds squawking] [soft somber music] - I believe in the power of spirituality and I believe it travels.

When I come here, I want to just embrace the feeling and try to put myself in those times, and think of their prayers more than mine.

And I know their prayers were not the same as mine, 'cause their prayers were probably about some of the suffering that they had, and wanted to be in a better place.

And I'm sure they are.

[soft somber music] [vocalist humming] That's my prayer.

That is my prayer.

[soft somber music] [vocalist humming] I feel very protected here.

[soft somber music] [vocalist humming] [birds chirping] [Jimmie sighs] [soft somber music] [vocalist humming] Going for the Peoples' history.

- I'm anxious to see it.

I'm Emma Peoples Smith.

I'm 91 1/2.

Turn left.

My great-grandfather bought and sold slaves.

- I met Emma through Sardis Presbyterian Church.

Emma's family goes back in Charlotte generations.

She attended a couple events that we had, and just as a spectator, she emotionally said how appreciative she was that we are talking about this because she had this history in her family that had slaves, but she didn't know how to deal with it.

- So these are the documents you brought with you today?

- Yes, correct.

- [Jimmie] Our connection allowed her to go back in her own history with a purpose.

That was one of the bonding elements of our relationship.

- What does that say?

"Bill for our family and slaves."

That's what De and Jimmie Lee is very interested in.

- You think this is the will.

- Oh, yeah.

- Isn't it?

And that's- - I am astonished that you have so much and that- - [Emma] Beautiful handwriting, isn't it?

- I know, I like this one the best 'cause I can read it better than the other ones.

- [Jimmie] Read us a little bit.

- So he says, "I will revise and bequeath to my beloved wife, Jane, my whole estate," with every description.

And then he goes on to, "Divide a tract of land, and enslaved person," as well.

- [Jimmie] These are incredible, these documents.

- You can learn so much about the time period.

Like what they sold what- - Whether it embarrasses you or not.

- It is what it is.

- Yeah.

- I've never felt the burden of guilt, but when I begin to read these human lives and meet the descendants, I feel the guilt.

I can cry over reading it.

And that's where Jimmie Lee is very interested.

Where I feel guilt, he is digging out the truth, and said, "Don't feel guilty."

But I do.

Children inherited the slaves.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Jimmie] That's how you have to trace it sometimes.

You know?

- It was considered property.

- How do you feel about this?

Does it make you sad or angry or what emotion do you feel?

- It makes me a little bit sad to know that someone this young, 17 years old, and he's just been sold off.

It's tough to think about.

- Are you angry with me now?

- No!

No, absolutely not.

[chuckles] - [chuckles] You see that, that is an emotion, how you feel toward me or?

- No.

- But I'm sure you and I both feel a little guilt, although we had nothing to do with this.

Do you feel some guilt or sadness?

- Five years ago I felt some guilt, but more [sighs] surprise and anger, has been my, it's driven my research, because it was shocking to me, so.

As you got into this, did you feel shocked by the extent to which your family owned slaves?

- What I feel really good about is Jimmie Lee pushing to get this information out.

It's made me feel more comfortable with the fact that it happened.

- Right.

I have to come to terms with what a lot of people describe as America's original sin, which was slavery.

And I think it left a big mark on me.

And I would go so far as to say that's what most white Americans have to do.

Come to the realization that the problem is ours.

It was an extraordinary system of, I think, completely evil.

[soft somber music] Reality that I grew up with was that we were a family of dairy farmers.

In my research, I discovered a lot of land in Mecklenburg County.

[somber music] [somber music continues] I don't know what brokered the silence, but there were slaves.

Slavery was never part of the conversation.

But when I track it back, it's all there.

Generation after generation.

[phone ringing] - Hello.

- De!

Hey, it's Helen.

- Hi, Helen.

- Hey, Jimmie.

- [Jimmie] Nice hearing your voice.

- [Helen] I wanted to share a little information with you guys that I found.

- [De] Absolutely.

- [Helen] State archives in Raleigh had something called the North Carolina Agricultural Schedules.

The census takers recorded an amazing amount of factual material.

- Right.

- And Hugh is in all three of 'em.

1850, 1860, and 1870.

What these tell us is that for at least a decade, possibly two, leading up to the Civil War, your great-great-grandfather, Hugh Kirkpatrick, was one of Mecklenburg's County's top producers of cotton.

- Wow.

- [Helen] He grew, relative to other people, a lot of cotton.

- Well, that explains the number of slaves, I think.

- Interesting.

- I was just looking at the ages of Hugh's slaves, and there were a lot of children.

- [Helen] We do know that women and children were often expected to pick.

20 of the 34 people he enslaved in 1850 were under 10.

- Charlotte was a segregated city, when I was growing up.

My father was pretty seriously racist.

He loved to tell terrible anti-Black jokes, as did my uncles, not all of them, but a lot of my father's friends.

All of that color barrier made no sense to me.

It was inconsistent with my experience with people who worked for our family.

And how I got treated by them was with kindness.

I didn't set out to right that wrong, but I did act differently.

In 1965, I was applying to Harvard, and my brother, he said, "You've gotta write an essay that's going to get the admissions committee attention."

I wrote about this guy.

I wrote about his being a subject of discrimination.

I was very upset about your story.

It got me into Harvard.

[solemn music] [dramatic music] [upbeat music] - The Shrine Bowl is something Jimmie looked forward to playing in.

- [De] There was no question that he would be chosen.

- [Andy] And if you made it to the Shrine Bowl, then you done and made a name for yourself.

- [De] And so when he wasn't chosen, I was stunned.

- [Andy] He just got a raw deal and that was it.

[somber music] [somber music continues] - When Julius Chambers got involved, he told my mother that I would certainly be the center of the controversy, but that I wouldn't be required to participate.

I just didn't want to be in that turmoil.

[soft somber music] [explosions crashing] [somber music] - The last thing that I had thought about was some kind of bomb.

That was always stuff that was going on in the deep south.

You know, Charlotte was too civilized for that.

[somber music] We were living in the midst of a revolution, and the things had been building.

[solemn music] When I was halfway asleep, I distinctly remember hearing thunder in the distance.

That was probably Reginald Hawkins's place going off.

Then I heard something louder, which was probably explosion at my uncle's.

And the next thing was a big boom that sounded very close and a big flash of light.

And well, it turns out that was because somebody had put some dynamite about where you're sitting.

The flash of light was the explosion.

[solemn music] - [Reginald] We were bombed all of us, Julius, Kelly, Fred, and myself, within three minutes of one another, so we know it was planned.

And I believe what it was was football.

[solemn music] - Pushing against the status quo was always subject to some form of retaliation.

It's about power.

The terrorists win when you stop.

And my father wasn't gonna stop.

I wasn't gonna stop.

So it was a blip along the road that leads us to where we are now.

[solemn music] - When these bombs happened, there were threats all over the place.

"Jimmie Lee, you're next, your community next."

Yeah, there was a lot of concern.

"See, Jimmie, I told you that's how you were gonna be treated.

This didn't work.

Loser."

And it's kind of stayed away.

And there were people in the white community that were disappointed and kind of stayed, so it was a lonely, kind of depressing time.

[solemn music] I left Charlotte, I was 18 years old.

You know, and never returned to live.

I didn't want to integrate anything ever again, because this is tough.

So, but I ended up going to Purdue and same thing, I started integrating things there.

- [Commentator] There is Phipps giving to Kirkpatrick.

Good second effort.

[whistle trills] - [Jimmie] I instantly realized that the only Black people here are athletes.

So we're going, "Where all the Black people?"

[chuckles] You know?

'Cause we thought we were going north.

And little did we know Indiana is north but doesn't act north.

[spectators cheering] - [Commentator] There's Kiepert to Kirkpatrick.

- [Jimmie] We were Rose Bowl Champions, Big Ten Champions, 9 - 1.

- [Commentator] Jim Kirkpatrick is deep.

He runs, kicks back very well at the five.

- [Jimmie] Played quite a bit.

I ran back kickoff.

- [Commentator] 25, and boy, did he run into a wall up front.

- Blew my knee out.

I had some serious surgery.

Just lost my desire to play football.

I really felt I had let Charlotte down, and my family down, and my friends down, 'cause I'd given up on football and left.

[upbeat music] And so I thought, "Well, what better place to start anew than Oregon?"

- [Wendell] All us hippies avoided Tillamook County, 'cause you would get busted out there.

- Oh yeah.

- You'd get hassled bad out there.

The only reason I felt safe moving to Tillamook was 'cause you gave it its stamp of approval.

- [Jimmie] Well, as you know, I'm not sure how strong that stamp was.

- [Wendell] Yes, but you were still alive.

- [Jimmie] I was still alive.

[laughing] That was the proof.

- [Wendell] That was, brother, that was.

- [Jimmie] But there was a few close calls.

- [Wendell] You had a white girlfriend, and you were still alive.

- All right.

[Jimmie and Wendell laughing] [upbeat music] The 70s and that time in Tillamook was definitely my hippie period.

[upbeat music continues] A lot of people, like me, had tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.

[dramatic upbeat music] [car engine rumbling] [gentle music] That's the white house I lived in, for like five or six years.

[gentle music] Oh man.

[gentle bright music] I got a photo of me right here, at home.

[gentle bright music] I call it my wilderness period, because I had no idea where I was gonna go, or where I would end up.

- [Martin] Welcome to the hinterlands!

- [Wendell] Looking civilized, Martin.

- [Jimmie] Thanks to being good.

When I came to Tillamook, I just wanted to be who I was in Tillamook, you know?

- It's one of the first times I'd ever trusted a community enough to kinda enter into it.

Really, I swear.

Got Jimmie the- - We all three had a past that we were escaping.

- That's right.

That's what we did.

We became of age, you know, in so many ways together.

- In so many ways together.

- So many ways together, yeah.

- Yeah.

[gentle somber music] [birds chirping] - Jimmie and I, we'd grown up in the same era.

I had my anti-war marches on Washington, and going to New Haven, and to protest incarceration of Black Panthers.

And Jimmie had his.

We were simpatico in ways that were divided by Black and white, but not.

[gentle somber music] [water hissing] [soft gentle music] [gentle somber music] - I started this journey with my family genealogy mainly because I wasn't raised by Kirkpatricks.

I was raised by the McVays.

I was raised by my great-grandmother.

[gentle somber music] So here we are at the McVay homestead right here.

- [J.J.]

This is all that's left?

- This is it.

There was a huge apple tree right next to the house.

My great-grandmother would make apple butter from it.

This was very rural, hadn't connected to the city here, so there wasn't running water, wasn't electricity.

I loved it here.

- Every time we come back to Charlotte, it's the tour.

It's the what-used-to-be-here tour.

Here's what we did back in the day.

To hear him describe vibrant Black communities, it's very clear that when he looks around he sees that, and he doesn't see what's there now.

- [Jimmie] Good Samaritan Hospital.

- [J.J.]

You were born here, right?

- [Jimmie] Yep.

74 years ago.

- [J.J.]

The erasure of the culture, the literal bulldozing of neighborhoods and communities, it makes me really sad.

[somber music] [vocalist humming] - [Virtual Assist] Second Ward High School opened as Mecklenburg County's first Black high school in 1923.

- Oh yeah.

That is cool.

- Wanna get closer?

- Yeah, let's.

[somber music] [screen whooshes] Oh wow.

[somber music] Dear Second Ward.

This is incredible.

Had a English class over there.

[bell ringing] [somber music] This is beautiful.

[students chattering] [somber music] [somber music continues] When I was coming up, my father left and moved to New York.

My mother, at that time, worked all the time, as much as she could, didn't make a lot of money.

She would come and say hello to me or visit me every day.

It must've been very painful to give up a child, even though it was still a loving family.

And so I know she made a strong effort to keep the bond to bond with me.

And she did.

You know?

And so, but I knew that that could not have been easy.

You know, she had to do this in her in-law's home of the man that left her.

[car engine rumbling] - [Nancy] They called Daddy nickname Jimmy.

Jimmy Kirkpatrick, but his name was Curlee Kirkpatrick Jr.

- My father was very popular in the neighborhood.

He played in the Negro Leagues.

He was my first hero and idol.

He never saw me play football and he never came to a game.

I kind of have evolved from loving him to being disappointed, to being angry, to loving him again.

My father had several children.

I remember, he'd just mention, "What do you think of Mike?"

I went, "Mike?

What are you talking about?"

And during that time, Mike Tyson taking the world by storm.

That's how Mike and I's world came together, we both had big Jim as our father.

Mike obviously had his issues with my father as well.

He was estranged to my father.

To his credit, he did respect our father for who he was.

And we talked, you know, about getting a headstone.

And just about a year ago it was completed.

- I could hear him saying Scoop.

Mm, [chuckles] oh.

[soft somber music] - [Jimmie] Very good.

- Shut up.

Nothing's good.

[somber music] - Getting you outta this cold weather.

- I'm not talking.

- Okay, don't talk.

[Mildred and Emma giggle] - [Mildred] How're your knees doing?

- My knees are fine.

[Mildred laughs] It's my mouth that gets me in trouble.

[laughs] - Did they heal?

[chuckles] - Emma, when we initially met, she started to tell me that, "Yes, I know your family."

She mentioned that there was this lady, her name was Hazel, "She helped raise me."

And I'm going, "Hazel?

Are you maybe talking about my Aunt Hazeline?"

- This is Mildred's mother that helped raise me.

- Hazeline Grier Kirkpatrick, my mama.

- [Emma] And that area was named Grier Town for her family.

- Mm-hmm.

Then she helped me raise my children.

She had a scrapbook with all of her white family, her white children.

[chuckles] [Emma chuckles] - I'm sure for Mildred, there is some anger and confusion around that relationship.

And it really kinda goes back to how Blacks and whites related to each other.

There's two generations of taking care of other people's children.

And oftentimes they got better treatment than the kids did, you know, and so I know just from my own personal history and my aunts are talking to my aunts, how sometime that spilled over into the home when the mother would come back home, you know?

Don't wanna tie the children, you know?

[chuckles] [somber music] This is it here.

This is Cockes's house, where Mom and De worked.

Your great-great-grandmother.

- Yeah.

- Worked here for 58 years.

- [J.J.]

It's funny, in my head, when you would talk about this place, I always pictured some crazy huge mansion out by itself on the hill.

- It's fairly modest compared to some of the other houses here, but he was a very powerful man.

- Probably every single one of these houses has a similar story with the alternate universe Kirkpatrick family.

- Yep.

- Being the housekeeper for this wealthy white family, that dynamic is coming from slavery.

And it just dawned on me that every single one of those houses had that dynamic, and not that long before that it was literal slaves.

[somber music] - [De] The first time we got together, Jimmie said, "Would you like to go see your ancestors' grave sites, built on my great-great-great- great-grandfather's plantation?"

I did not know this existed.

The original cemetery is still on that land.

[somber music] [crows cawing] "Time and history had not been kind.

Both of us, a Black man and a white man, walked through the oldest section of the church graveyard.

It was the whites-only section.

I know my friend's people were buried in unmarked sites in the woods behind us.

There would be no headstones or slabs for them.

Even if we went looking, we wouldn't find anything to honor their place."

[crow cawing] [somber music] "I stood at the edge of that fence and stared into those woods, filled with brambles, rotted trees and a pronounced air of negligence, imagining their history, imagining their burials as my family's slaves."

[wind whooshing] [somber music] "Profound neglect was their headstone."

[somber music] "It broke my heart."

[somber music] [keyboard keys clacking] I have this project, the book, stimulated by the journey that Jimmie and I started down.

"Marse."

Marse is a 19th century synonym for master.

That's the title.

A question that kept gnawing at me was how owning another human being was morally defensible.

It's a good-faith effort to answer that question.

I devoured every book on slaveholding that I could find.

I just kept going deeper and deeper into trying to answer that question.

[soft gentle solemn music] [birds chirping] - There was a long time when I was very angry about my slave history.

You know, I was angry about people that could enslave a person.

Did Christians really do that?

You know, so I was a young man that was questioning all of that.

Questioning my Christianity, questioning white people.

I wanted to know the truth.

I want to know this history, because the more I've learned about it, the more I can understand today's issues.

[birds chirping] [somber music] And your emotional reservoir needs to be full, because it's painful.

[somber music] [birds chirping] [screen crunching] [dramatic music] - [Fountain] We were slaves.

We belonged to people.

They sell us, like they sell horses and cows, and hogs, and all like that.

[insects chirping] [somber music] And they put you up on the bench and bid on you.

Just same as you bidding on cattle, you know?

[insects chirping] [somber music] [birds squawking] [bird shrieks] Now I couldn't move across the street, or I couldn't go to nobody's house without having a note from my master.

If I had that pass, I could go wherever he sent me.

[somber music] [bird shrieking] [dramatic music] After we got free, we didn't know nothing to do.

And my mother, she hunted places, and bound us out for a dollar a month.

But we didn't have no property.

We didn't have no home.

[somber music] [insects chirping] [birds squawking] [insects chirping] [solemn music] [solemn music continues] [insects continue chirping] - This is the property of Sardis Presbyterian Church.

Church got its start in about 1790.

A very traditional type of graveyard from the 17- and 1800s.

Headstone, which is really just a field stone, just a big rock.

No initials, no name.

It's surrounded by this stockade fence done by the Boy Scouts here.

- The project was completed in 2015.

I offered to do the ground penetrating radar, which was actually inspiration from growing up, watching TV shows, but we actually found an additional 20 people that were buried in there.

But these people had just literally been forgotten, and they've lived a hard life.

You know, of course there's people that don't really wanna talk about it.

And I've run into people that have other opinions, some negative comments, or whatever.

[laughs] I've kinda heard everything, unfortunately.

To see somebody here that has relatives buried there, can't even describe that.

It was tremendously emotional.

[soft somber music] - [Jimmie] I realized that I'm from a strong, rooted family.

I have recognized thoughts that came through my ancestral heritage.

But to find out that an illiterate ex-slave was able to purchase 180 acres, and farm and hire people, and raise children.

In those times, during the height of Jim Crow era?

Is something that I could be proud of.

[somber music] [children yelling and chattering] [group laughing] - So do you think that by you guys connecting, has it opened up a discussion of Black and white issues in the city of Charlotte?

- For us, the conversation took on, not just about racism, let's talk about the history of slavery in an honest way.

- Do you think that's one reason why they don't want us to know?

And when I say "they," you know who I'm talking about.

- I do.

- Yeah.

They don't want us to know about our history.

And we was kept away from that a lot in their schools.

- They could care less about Black folks.

- That's right.

- You know, they could care less about what you're talking about.

- Right.

- What's disturbing, you and Jimmie are selling an education that we don't have, an education that was lost.

History that you don't know about, right here in the city of Charlotte.

We've gained that knowledge right now.

Wow.

You know?

You're waking the dead.

So now it's gotta move forward.

- My great-uncle, Thomas Leroy Kirkpatrick, an attorney, president of the Mecklenburg County Bar.

He was mayor, a state senator.

As I've dug into his history, he was a proud white supremacist.

That's when I called Jimmie up to say, "Don't be surprised if, you know, I find a Klan robe in a closet."

The driver for all this white supremacist stuff is fear.

The fear that white people have, being on an equal level with a person of color.

[soft somber music] [keyboard keys clacking] [birds chirping] I'm a psychologist.

I spent a lot of time on the other side of the couch as a patient in my training.

I have the portraits of Hugh and his wife Louisa up on my wall now.

The slaveholders.

And I yell at 'em every once in a while.

[group chuckles] Very therapeutic.

[group laughs] Once I learned more about the honest, cold truth, I got angry.

- My dad went here, my grandfather briefly went here.

I think his father briefly went here.

And Bishop Cobbs, somebody who started Sewanee, there's a Cobbs Lane, his portrait stared me down in my politics class last semester.

And the extent of my research on him has been his Wikipedia page.

And it just said that he owned enslaved people, and I've stopped there, 'cause I just didn't wanna- - Not ready to go down that path?

- Yeah.

[bells tolling] - What do you say to people who say, "Hey, your story's beautiful, but everybody has equal rights now.

We've had a Black president.

We just gotta not make a big deal of this"?

- We all would like to move forward.

You know, right now we are struggling over our history.

And what is our history?

And who should be recognized as our heroes in the history?

It's about the past.

- In a way, we solved the problem of segregation by law.

What we have not solved is what's in our hearts.

Suppose slavery never existed.

How different would America be?

- Let's thank these guys for being here with us tonight.

- There's a lot of fear here, as it is across America, in both Black and white communities.

[somber music] [somber music continues] No matter how many degrees Harvey Gantt gets behind his name, he's still Black.

And that means something different.

So slavery, the fact that we came and became slaves has conferred a status upon us that hasn't been erased, even to this day.

[somber music] [crowd chattering] - Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

Great seeing you.

[somber music] [crowd chattering] "The fact that slaveholders and Christian divines got racial slavery insinuated into God's plan in such a convincing manner, is one of the world's best long cons.

And it still has 21st-century legs."

[crowd yelling] "It's alive and well.

A legacy of white supremacy, that we had been given by the southern slave master."

It's a very difficult problem.

Jimmie's been great, helping me with that.

This Black/white brotherhood thing we got going, this has been very healing.

[gentle solemn music] - [Jimmie] I've always wanted to, you know, have the opportunity to share my truth.

- [Announcer] Jimmie's perseverance and voice, the landscape of Charlotte football has forever been changed.

- [Jimmie] To receive something like this, knowing that my grandkids and my children, who stopped listening to these stories I told so many times, now they can see the evidence.

[somber music] And Charlotte will know this story in the future.

- [Announcer] Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick Award and a $10,000 college scholarship, is Jeremiah Burch Jr., Olympic High School.

Let's give it up for Jeremiah, and all these incredibles up here.

- [Interviewee] Jimmie Lee, what was it like to learn that you had left such an incredible legacy right here in your hometown?

The place that you were so ready to get away from?

- [Jimmie] God, it was one of the most proudest moments of my life.

[somber music] [birds chirping] Hello, folks.

[chuckles] Guess who's here?

[Jimmie and De laughing] [gentle solemn music] [gentle solemn music continues]