Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise

Calling all Black people.

Calling all Black people.

Calling all Black people, man, woman, and child.

Gates: I grew up in a world that was transforming, a world where segregation was fading away, where Black people were stepping out of the shadows and into the limelight.

Women: Set our warrior free Men: Free Huey!

Gates: As a young man, I saw rallies and revolutionaries, and I was convinced that change was right around the corner.

We want Black power.

We want Black power.

But I never imagined how much was still to come.

Kanye West: For my theme song My leather black jeans on... Gates: I've lived to see astonishing progress.

[Applause] African Americans have achieved so much in so many ways, surpassing our greatest hopes and our wildest dreams.

We're visible in virtually every facet of American life... Defining its face and its voice to the world.

John Legend: One day when the glory comes... Gates: Yet far too many Black lives are still threatened by harsh inequalities.

[Chanting "Whose streets?

Our streets!"]

Why do we still have to march to protect our rights?

[Crowd shouting "Black lives matter!"]

Gates: 50 years ago, I thought that, by now, we would have been long past all this.

How did we get here?

How have we come so far... And yet have so far to go?

Women: Glory Jackson: Just because you're born in the slum does not mean the slum is born in you, and you can rise above it if your mind is made up.

Gates: I remember watching this speech and feeling a sense of amazement, realizing that an African American could be a viable candidate for the presidency of the United States.

It was 1984.

I was 33 years old and the father of two lovely daughters.

I was an associate professor at Yale.

The future seemed bright.

Race relations in America were so much better than when I was growing up, and for people like me, people who had benefited so much from affirmative action, it felt like there were no limits to what we could do.

Did race still matter?

Of course it mattered.

But the question was, how much did it matter?

Oprah: Good morning, everybody.

I'm Oprah Winfrey... Gates: The answer, at least for some, seemed to be not very much.

[Theme music playing] Everybody loves Oprah You mean me?

[Laughter] Gates: In 1984, Oprah Winfrey started hosting a local morning talk show.

She was 29 years old, born in rural Mississippi, and she was about to become a national phenomenon.

She's stealing the show Gates: I remember watching her rapid rise with immense pride.

Oprah and I are part of the same generation, a generation that built its success on the victories of the civil rights movement.

Oprah: Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke at my high school, and he said, "Excellence is the best deterrent to racism.

Therefore, be excellent."

So I had that quote on my mirror-- "Excellence is the best deterrent to racism.

Be excellent."

Was race ever an obstacle in your career?

No.

You know why?

Because I was born at the right time, and I was never, not one day, in a segregated school.

Mmm.

Same with me.

So I had never had the indoctrination of "You're less than" or made to feel, like, in a classroom I couldn't raise my hand, couldn't say what I wanted to say, couldn't be myself.

My children.

Gates: Looking back, it's easy to forget that Oprah was doing something radically different for a Black person simply by being herself on national television, exposing the intimate details of her life for everybody to see.

Oprah: I have lost, as of this morning... As of this morning, 67 pounds since July 7th... Gates: People in our generation, but certainly people older who were Black, would never have made themselves vulnerable in public before White people.

Never.

We didn't have pain, you know.

We were beyond, um, suffering.

Yeah.

What was it about you?

How did you figure that out?

When you are able to literally connect to the heart of somebody and they can see that, "Oh, I do that.

Oh, I eat that.

"Oh, I have a weight issue.

"Oh, I felt terrible "when I lost my first boyfriend, "and I was distraught, and I ate a sleeve of Oreos..." All the things I was willing to talk about that felt neither Black nor White nor Asian nor Hispanic, they were able to look beyond color of my skin and see the content of my character.

Gates: Oprah embodied a new era, an era of Black crossover superstars... ["Billie Jean" playing] From Michael Jackson to Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan to Whitney Houston, African Americans were winning fame and fortune... Murphy: "I have some ice cream..." Gates: In ways that would have been unimaginable even a decade before.

Listen to me.

Gates: And their success encouraged America to think differently about race.

There's a back-seat Lover That's always Undercover And I talk till... Brown: What happens is that I think White people can now suddenly imagine themselves, identifying with Black success in a new way.

What that means is that if you happen to be famous, right, then we'll accept you into our society as a rough equal, maybe even a better.

How about a little one-on-one?

Jordan: I'm ready.

Gates: Black success wasn't confined to the realm of celebrities.

African Americans were making dramatic gains in almost every arena.

Brazile: This was a transformational period.

Visibility is viability.

And we start seeing more Blacks in corporate America, more Black television personalities.

So things were changing slowly, albeit slowly.

But there was no question that we were not going back.

This was a journey forward.

Gates: As the 1980s progressed, there were more Black doctors and lawyers, more Black politicians, and pioneers in dozens of fields-- the first Black astronaut, the first Black Miss America, even the man who would become the first Black billionaire.

In 1980, entrepreneur Robert Johnson was trying to start a cable channel aimed at Black audiences.

Johnson had almost no money.

90-plus percent return on investment.

But he was able to talk his way into a $500,000 check from an investor.

Johnson: Here I was, 9 of 10 kids, growing up in Freeport, Illinois.

$500,000 was equal to the entire GDP of everybody Black in the city.

So I got this money in my hand, and I'm-- Did you cry?

Did you cry?

It's probably like Sir Edmund Hillary when he looked at Mount Everest and said, "Hey, there's a mountain.

I'll bet you I can climb it."

And he just said, "OK, I'm gonna do it, because I think I can."

B.E.T.

Gates: Johnson used the money to launch B.E.T., Black Entertainment Television.

It was a modest enterprise at first.

But Johnson soon saw a way to make it grow.

The record industry started making music videos, but MTV was not playing Black videos.

Right.

Not before Michael Jackson.

Not before Michael Jackson.

[Oran "Juice" Jones' "The Rain" playing] I saw you... Johnson: I went to the record companies, and I said, "Look, you guys make videos.

I'll play them as long as you keep making them."

And so that became a source of free programming, which is really good.

Times are good or bad... Because when you've got free programming and you're getting paid by the cable operators and you get paid by the advertisers, that's a pretty good business model.

That's pure profit.

Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

You've got to work hard to screw that one up.

LL Cool J: For the first time in my life I see I need love... Gates: B.E.T.

soon became a major force in the music industry and an extraordinarily profitable company.

Montell Jordan: This is how we do it Johnson: It proved unequivocally that African Americans, given financial support and a vision, can create significant wealth for Black investors and White investors and anybody else.

And that's a major accomplishment.

We were the first African American company publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

That's right.

All of the things I've done, part of it is to prove in some way to White America that if you simply invest in... transfer and put more capital behind talented Black individuals, they will generate as much wealth as anybody else.

You've just got to have the confidence and the commitment to do it.

Gates: For people of my generation, success stories like Johnson's were utterly thrilling.

They inspired us to think about the possibilities of individual Black achievement in entirely new ways.

The system seemed to be opening up at the top.

It was intoxicating, but it was also, in some ways, deceptive.

Cornel West: The 1980s did provide various opportunities for Black folk because the markets were bursting out all over, and so if you were prepared, if you had high-level skills, you were able to get in, and lo and behold, live lives of fairly decent material prosperity.

But we're talking about a slice of Black America.

You see, the rest of Black America had to deal with the Reagan cutbacks, the Reagan speed-ups at the workplace, increasing unemployment and underemployment.

Gates: At the same time that some African Americans were finding that racial barriers had fallen, many others were living in places where the barriers seemed insurmountable.

Day: The poverty in my neighborhood was striking, and it was pervasive.

We were the ones who waited on the line for welfare cheese, and I knew I was poor, but it was embarrassing for me to have my mother send me to the store to go spend food stamps on food.

Gates: Ronald Day grew up in the South Bronx in an almost entirely Black neighborhood.

The people he saw getting ahead weren't starting their own cable TV companies.

They were selling drugs.

Ron, paint a picture for me.

What would we have seen on these streets, middle of the day?

Day: You had maybe 5 or 6 different crews dealing drugs, and so there was a lot of competition, and so one crew was on the corner, one crew was on the next corner.

The other crew was up the block.

I mean, we were resigned to the fact that this was the neighborhood that we lived in, and there was not much that we could do to change it.

Gates: By the time he was 15, Ronald had dropped out of high school and was dealing heroin.

Day: I didn't see people who were going to school earning a high-school diploma and really doing well with their lives.

So it was like, to what end do I stay in school?

The lure of the street was much more powerful than the classroom.

I mean, I went from making maybe $50 a day to making, a year or two later, maybe a couple of thousand dollars a day.

A day?

Yes.

That's a lot of money.

It is a lot of money.

It is a lot of money for someone who is 15, 16, 17 years old.

Gates: The money got even better when a new drug flooded the market-- crack cocaine.

Crack provided an intense high at a low price.

It was fabulously profitable for Ronald's business but devastating for his neighborhood.

Man: You can find crack in front of schools, in front of churches, in front of synagogues.

You can buy crack when you can't buy a bottle of milk.

Different man: You have no words to describe how bad it is.

I've seen young mothers with babies in strollers and small toddlers at their skirt tail buying crack in the neighborhood where I live.

Day: The crack addict would purchase drugs and then be back an hour later.

And they wanted some more then?

And they wanted some more, and people had to get money on a regular basis in order to feed that habit.

So you took from your mother, you took from your father, you took from your children.

Did part of you worry, feel guilty about the effect that this was having on the community?

I would say that I did feel guilty, but the feeling was fleeting.

So I wasn't outside, making the observation about... Wow.

Look at what my behavior is doing, look at how I'm contributing to the harm that's being done in my community.

I never had the opportunity to do that type of reflection.

All I knew was the drug culture and the drug life.

Gates: The drug life eventually caught up with Ronald Day.

When he was 24, he was convicted of attempted murder as well as drug and weapons charges and spent 15 years in prison.

At least he survived.

Many of his friends ended up dead, killed in turf wars between rival drug gangs, like countless others in cities across America.

Woman: As the drug trade has escalated, so has the violence.

Virtually every night, police pick up bodies.

Cobb: We saw these epic death tolls, overwhelmingly Black males in American cities, every major American city, in a way that people had not seen before.

Man: Every night there are drive-by shootings and victims who are sometimes soldiers in this war but often not.

Often they are innocents in the crossfire.

Gates: It's difficult to estimate the death toll of America's drug trade.

Even experts say the casualties are uncountable.

But while the violence was real and terrifying, the neighborhoods that were most affected were full of people who were neither drug dealers nor drug users.

And some of them began to band together to fight back.

Sharpton: Sell crack!

Sell crack!

Get cracked!

Get cracked!

Sharpton: People's homes were being robbed.

People were being robbed in the street.

I was worried for my own mother.

People wanted more policing.

People wanted more protection.

Sharpton: Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Get back, crack!

Close the crack house!

Close the crack house!

Save the babies!

Save the babies!

Sharpton: We'd march out, and I'd paint red Xs on the store to say, "They're selling crack in here."

Sharpton: Sell crack!

Sell crack!

Crack in New York!

Say what?

Stop crack in New York!

Stop, stop, stop, stop crack!

Say what?

Stock crack in New York!

Next crack house!

Next crack house!

Sharpton, voice-over: The idea of it was to expose "We know where the crack is.

Why aren't the police doing something about it?"

[Cheering and applause] Gates: Activists saw the drug trade as a symptom of a much larger problem.

They called for better policing, social services, job programs, and much more.

But their calls were drowned out by a drumbeat of sensationalized one-dimensional media stories.

Man: This is the battlefield, as much a battlefield as the jungles of Vietnam.

And this is the enemy-- dealers peddling deadly drugs.

Sharpton: The media portrayed it as a Black habit, when it clearly was not limited to the Black community.

But the face of crack became Black, and the street crime Black.

And it really, as that image was constantly pounded in the American psyche, it was that image of making Black and crack and crime synonymous, is why they got away with then turning it into a high incarceration rate for Blacks, because people had been seeing that all these years.

Gates: The deluge of media stories about Black crime had an extraordinary effect, turning complex social and medical problems into a war on drugs, a war justified and intensified by its own rhetoric.

Tommy Robinson: The death penalty is a deterrent.

When you fry that drug dealer that caused the death of someone, that person is never going to come back.

If you're going to wage a war against drugs, you've got to determine that you're willing to do what's necessary to give you the threshold of a true war.

Man: Police!

Bush: Take my word for it, this scourge will stop.

Holder: I was a U.S.

Attorney here in Washington, D.C.

and there was a real need for some kind of effective law-enforcement response, but I think, unfortunately, what we did was come up with a response that, um... didn't think about the long-term consequences of what it is we were... we were doing.

[Sirens] Gates: The war on drugs combined massive increases in police spending with new sentencing laws that disproportionately affected Black communities.

Ifill: A whole apparatus was created that essentially criminalized Black men and criminalized them at a higher level for conduct that Whites would also engage in.

The most infamous example, of course, is the 100:1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine.

Gates: Powder cocaine and crack were chemically identical.

But crack was cheaper, more common in poor neighborhoods, and under the new laws, punished much more harshly.

Man: There's a mandatory 5-year prison term for selling 500 grams of powder, about a pound.

But the same penalty applies to selling just 5 grams of crack, 100 times less.

Get on your [beep] knees, boy.

Ifill: That had no pharmacological basis, had no logical basis, but it was understood that African American men were more likely to be arrested for crack-possession crimes than White men were, so the racial implications of it were well-known when it was enacted, and yet it was done anyway.

Gates: From 1983 to 1997, the number of African Americans incarcerated for drug offenses grew by over 2,000%.

That's more than 6 times the rate of increase for White Americans.

Holder: Whites and Blacks use drugs at roughly the same rates, and so how do you explain these unbelievable differences in the way in which White folks and Black folks were...were treated?

Um...there was a certain callousness.

[Indistinct shouting] Forman Jr.

: There's a policy response which is incredibly aggressive and incredibly intrusive and targets Black communities not for help, treatment, better schools, better job-training programs.

Instead, Black communities get one thing really and one thing only, which is more police and longer prison sentences.

[Beep] the police, coming straight from the underground A young nigger got it bad 'cause I'm brown... Gates: As their neighborhoods came under siege, young Black people refused to be silent.

They used hip-hop to call out the injustices that were engulfing their communities with a harsh language designed to match the brutality they saw all around them.

Jeffries: I remember going down to Morehouse College and hearing for the first time, in the dormitory, Ice Cube and N.W.A., and the lyrics-- talking about "nigger this" and "nigger that"-- and just being shocked, like, what the hell is going on?

Come away.

What is this?

Ice-T: Damned right I'm a nigger We were like the voices from down here in the hood yelling out to people on a rap record.

People might get mad 'cause they don't see That they're looked upon as a nigger just like me Gates: The media named this new music gangsta rap.

Many of the artists simply called it reality rap.

Ice-T: Does South Central look like America to you?

Tupac: Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle Cooper: The thing is, these songs had a political critique, and it was important in that moment.

This was the ability of Black youth to talk back to these policies that were making their lives unlivable.

I don't think they were positive images, but I think they were valuable representations that told us about parts of Black life that we weren't talking about.

Dyson: They're listening to Tupac say, "Just the other day, I got lynched by some crooked cops, "and to this day, them same cops on the beat getting major pay.

"But when I get my check, they takin' tax out so we're paying the cops to knock the Blacks out."

So here's Tupac giving them a lesson in Economics 101, and America's going, "Wait a minute.

There's some intelligence here.

There's some insight here."

Tupac: Stress in the city, the cops on top of me The projects is full of bullets Though bodies is dropping... Tupac: We shouldn't be angry, that my raps that I'm rapping to my community shouldn't be filled with rage?

You know what I'm saying?

They shouldn't be filled with the same atrocities that they gave to me?

The media, they don't talk about it.

So in my raps, I have to talk about it.

And gunshots... Gates: Most gangsta rap was written by young Black people, barely out of their teens, yet it quickly became a global sensation.

I get loves all over the planet [Women speaking foreign language] Gates: But not all of the music was a critique of inner-city neglect.

Snoop Dogg: Got some bitches from the city of Compton To serve me... Gates: Much of it depicted a social world that seemed to some misogynistic and deeply amoral.

Now, a freak is a freak, and a ho is a ho Gates: And as it became increasingly popular, many African Americans were horrified.

They worried that it was glamorizing the destruction of Black communities and reinforcing longstanding racist stereotypes.

Jeffries: When the only thing that you're hearing becomes that which is most derogatory, that which is most demeaning towards Black women, that which is celebrating sort of death and destruction, the images that are being projected are problematic because there is no counterbalance.

Protestors: No gangsta rap.

No gangsta rap... Tucker: We African American women particularly are tired of being called hos, bitches, and sluts by our children, who are paid to do this by Time Warner.

Butts: We're not against rap.

We're not against rappers.

But we are against those thugs who disgrace our community, our women, who disgrace our culture, and who have absolutely nothing of redemptive value to offer except the legacy of violence and sexual assault and foul language.

Gates: The debate over rap music was intensely emotional because the stakes seemed so high.

As the 1990s began, the poorest African Americans were falling ever further behind, and there was no consensus about how to help.

Indeed, some were beginning to feel that poor Black people had already received too much help and needed instead to focus on their own behavior.

Williams: If you look at the Jewish community and the Muslim community, they don't have the kind of issues that the Black community have because they never allowed the government to take over their lives.

They...they were involved in their child's education.

They were involved in their child's discipline.

What has happened is, with these welfare programs, they've conceded so many other things-- the babies, the absentee fathers, the crime, the drugs-- and there's just no way you could put the genie back in the bottle.

The hopelessness, the despair that permeate many of our inner-city neighborhoods have caused some of us to turn on ourselves rather than turning to ourselves.

Gates: Black America was now engaged in a heated dispute over the question of where government responsibility for the poor ended and personal responsibility began.

The dispute would soon boil over on a very public stage.

In 1991, Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights hero, announced his retirement from the United States Supreme Court.

To fill the vacancy, President George Bush tapped conservative appeals court judge Clarence Thomas.

Bush: He is the best person for this position... Gates: Unlike Marshall, Thomas didn't believe that the federal government should advocate for African Americans or for any racial group.

To many, his nomination was deeply troubling.

Crenshaw: The Supreme Court was important because they backed up the demands of African Americans for greater access to the political sphere.

They backed up demands for the African American community for greater access to employment, for greater access to education, to housing.

Well, now the very institution that backs us up is going to have an African American who says, "Actually, you know, you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore."

Gates: Thomas grew up in rural Georgia during the waning years of Jim Crow.

He knew poverty firsthand, and he'd seen how the government could help lift people out of it.

He'd benefited tremendously from affirmative action.

But Judge Thomas didn't see it that way.

Thomas: It is expected that we all have the same basic beliefs, that we believe in certain social programs that are supposed to help Black people, and we don't--we're not supposed to question these programs.

Gates: Thomas was part of a small but growing wave of Black conservatives.

He believed that African Americans were being hurt by misguided government policies, like welfare and affirmative action.

Rigueur: Clarence Thomas says that affirmative action makes African Americans feel inferior.

They are constantly led to believe that they are unqualified.

So it really undermines them once they get to the highest levels of things, right?

Am I looking around and saying, "Do I deserve to be here?

Was I only chosen because I'm Black?

Am I a token?"

Woman: In a divisive debate, the National Bar Association voted Thomas down, as did the NAACP.

Gates: Civil rights organizations expressed opposition to Thomas' nomination.

And the Congressional Black Caucus refused to endorse him.

Towns: This nomination is a matter of the refutation of the very principles of justice and freedom for which so many gave their lives during the civil rights movement in this country.

Gates: But in the end, Thomas' ideas were never debated by the Senate in a meaningful way.

Instead, the confirmation process became transformed when law professor Anita Hill, a former colleague of Thomas', accused him of sexual harassment.

Professor, do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I do.

Thank you.

Gates: Hill's allegations triggered an intense debate among Black leaders.

You just don't have ordinary Blacks in this courtroom.

You have very well-educated Blacks from Yale Law School, from Holy Cross, the de la cream of the crop.

And if they're in the courtroom bickering over this nonsense, what kind of message are we sending to our younger generation?

Gates: Armstrong Williams had worked closely with Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill and considered them both his friends.

But as the hearings unfolded, he threw his support behind Judge Thomas.

Williams: I really liked Anita.

Anita was really good people.

But Justice Thomas and I are as a... He's my hero.

He's my mentor.

It must stop.

We must stop this sensationalism.

There's something wrong about this.

Chairman Thomas is innocent... Williams, voice-over: I became Malcolm X at that time.

By any means necessary, we would get him on the court.

Gates: Williams joined a chorus of conservatives who claim that Hill was part of a liberal conspiracy, even though she actually shared many of Thomas' political views.

But the criticism didn't stop her from testifying.

Hill: His conversations were very vivid.

He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes.

Gates: Thomas refused to back down.

Instead, he shifted the terms of the hearing, portraying himself as a victim of racism.

Thomas: This is a circus.

It's a national disgrace.

And from my standpoint, as a Black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.

Jeffries: Right there, he's invoking a call for solidarity, because who was not gonna defend a lynching or those who were trying to lynch a Black man?

Williams: It was war.

And in war, use every weapon at your disposal.

OK?

A lot of Republicans did not like the fact that Thomas was using this language, but it was Thomas' life and credibility on the line.

It was Thomas who was being humiliated.

You've got to do what you've got to do.

Women: We support Thomas!

We support Thomas!

Gates: Thomas' strategy proved extremely effective.

Polls showed that he was receiving enough support from African Americans to allow Republican senators to keep pushing his nomination forward, even as most civil-rights groups continued to oppose him.

Crenshaw: When has an African American man ever been lynched over anything that he's ever done to a Black woman?

I mean, what kind of history is that coming from?

It's not a history that we ever lived.

But it did the work that it was supposed to do.

Millions of African Americans were able to completely write Anita Hill out of the race, and some people actually called for that literally.

Some people actually said, "Anita Hill should be shot for what she's doing to Clarence Thomas."

Words simply cannot express the kind of anguish that I have experienced over the past several days.

Brown: There has been a strain of Black nationalism that's "my people, do or die."

And so that even Clarence Thomas, he was one of ours, and as one of ours, we shouldn't be criticizing him, especially when he's about to earn this high position.

There is also, you know, frankly, the sexist component of it.

A Black woman criticizing a Black man of high position is automatically betraying the race.

Rehnquist: Repeat after me.

I, Clarence Thomas... I, Clarence Thomas... Do solemnly swear... Williams: They backed down.

Yes, they did.

And had he not used that language, he would not be on the court today.

So I say amen.

[Applause] Gates: In the two decades since his confirmation, Justice Thomas has helped roll back government support for affirmative action and social welfare programs, while implying that African Americans should take personal responsibility for their own progress.

Yet it's not at all clear that poor individual choices are the main obstacle to Black progress.

Instead, too often, it has seemed that racism deeply woven into the fabric of our society, poses a greater threat.

Gumbel: The FBI today is investigating an explosive case in southern California involving White policemen and a Black motorist.

Los Angeles police officers pulled over a car they said was traveling in excess of the speed limit.

What you're seeing is what happened after that.

Gates: The Rodney King beating made America's racial troubles clear, even to some in the LAPD.

Powell: I saw it on TV, and my heart just stopped.

This was proof that police brutality was alive and well, and there was this expectation-- now somebody is gonna do something about it.

They have to do something about it because the whole world can see it.

You could see it right there.

It's caught on tape.

Gates: Stephanie Powell was an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department when the King video came to light.

Watching it, she was torn.

Powell: Being African American and being a police officer, you're making this attempt to fit in between two worlds and be loyal to both.

So being loyal to your race and at the same time being loyal to the department that you serve.

When you saw the video, did you think, "I didn't know this happened," or "Oh, my God.

They got caught"?

I think it was more so of..."Oh, my God.

We're gonna have a serious situation here."

Female reporter: A controversial case involving 4 Los Angeles police officers goes to court today.

The officers face charges stemming from the videotaped beating of a motorist.

The case has already raised accusations of officially sanctioned racism and brutality.

Woman: He was down.

He was down.

He was unarmed.

They could have... They didn't have to do that.

Gates: The hard evidence of the videotape illuminated two radically different perceptions of the relationship between Black people and the police.

Cobb: Depending upon your vantage point, this is an innocent Black man.

King: I was scared for my life.

Or these are police doing what you need police to do to prevent people like him from getting into your community and invariably doing some wrong.

And, you know, those are two completely different realities.

Gates: But the tape didn't produce the results that most African Americans had hoped for.

Man: We find the defendant not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury and... Powell: When the verdict came in, I hear the cheer go up when the officers are exonerated, and I just looked over at my... One of the other Black officers, and we didn't say anything.

We didn't need to say anything.

We both knew at the same time what it was we were feeling, and what we were feeling was, um... "This is not gonna go too well."

Mm-hmm.

Policeman: Hold your line!

Hold your line!

Hold your line!

Hold your line!

Nobody leaves the line!

[Indistinct shouting and glass breaking] Man: South Central Los Angeles is responding with fury to the acquittal of 4 Los Angeles police officers.

Woman: In South Central Los Angeles, the situation appears to have gotten worse there.

You know, we just cannot send camera crews in those areas because it's just too dangerous at this point.

Powell: It was heartbreaking to watch because I was living in South Central L.A.

during the riots, and I started seeing landmarks that I knew as a child start to...to burn.

Gates: I remember feeling shocked by the verdict but not by the ensuing riots.

They reflected something very deep and painful.

Brown: When those guys were exonerated, you just thought, "What's it all for?"

Right?

I mean, are we ever gonna find justice here?

All the civil rights movement, all the Black power movement, and everything that's come before... You're that vulnerable, right, to a lynch mob of police.

And they're gonna get away scot-free.

Jeffries: The response to the acquittal, the fury, the anger, and the frustration, is because of the visual evidence.

It's like, "How did you not see what I saw?"

Duvernay: I grew up in Compton in South Central.

That was a real shattering at that time as a young person in that place, from that place, when you can have evidence of this kind of assault, and yet, um... you know, yet... yet it doesn't matter.

Gates: The rioting expressed Black America's frustration at our criminal justice system, as both sign and symbol of our nation's systemic racism.

Yet many White Americans saw only pointless destruction.

It revealed a profound divide in the experiences of the American people, and as time passed, this divide would only grow.

Man: And now we're following somebody that we've all loved for so long that's been accused of some terrible crimes, and my kids are quite upset about this... Gates: O.J.

Simpson's arrest on suspicion of murder just two years after the L.A.

riots, exposed the same racial fault line between White and Black America, deepening the sense that we seem to be living in two separate worlds.

Simpson was one of the first Black crossover celebrities, a man whose success and popularity appeared to defy race.

But as his trial unfolded, it became obvious that race was very much a factor.

Jeffries: For White Americans, it's a trial of guilt or innocence of one man, O.J.

Simpson.

For African Americans, it's a trial of the legitimacy of the criminal justice system.

Gates: The issue took center stage when O.J.

's defense team began to focus on the conduct of the police.

Woman: The people call Detective Mark Fuhrman.

Man: Suddenly, Fuhrman is the most famous cop in America, not because he found the bloody glove on O.J.

Simpson's estate, but because of inferences that he planted it there, motivated by racial hatred.

Male reporter: Fuhrman used racial epithets and talked of framing people, fudging police reports.

Man: Detective Fuhrman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?

Fuhrman: I assert my fifth-amendment privilege.

Gates: Evidence of racism on the part of the LAPD confirmed the Black community's belief that the police could not be trusted and sowed doubt about Simpson's guilt.

Woman: Because, you know, he is a Black person, naturally, I feel that he's not gonna get a fair trial.

Race is always an issue when it comes to crime.

Do you think he can get a fair trial?

No.

This is the nature of the system.

This is the way the system works in this country.

It does not work for us, not at all.

I truly do feel like it's a frame-up.

Duvernay: They replaced the image of O.J.

with the image of all the Black men who have been set up, people that they know, brothers that they know.

So, yeah, I mean, you could talk to many people who were like, "No, he didn't do it.

You know, this was a setup."

Man: This is people's 164-A.

Gates: Many White Americans saw the same evidence but came to a very different conclusion.

Woman: From all the information that I heard on television, um...I just assume that he's guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty as sin.

There's just so much evidence.

Gates: On October 3, 1995, as the world waited in suspense for the verdict, our nation's racial divide was out in the open, plain as day.

But what happened next stunned everybody.

Woman: We the jury in the above and titled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187... Gates: For a brief moment, African Americans felt a collective sense of vindication.

Cooper: They put on the TVs in the classroom and let us watch the verdict.

All of the White kids come out of doors, and they're just shaking their head, and you literally saw Black kids run out of the doors, jumping.

It was such a clear distinction.

Many of us were friends, and we hung out, but those were those... those...those touch moments, those, uh...you know, moments that, you know, rubbed away the surface, and you saw that there was a real difference in the way that we perceived race relations in the country.

Brown: For a lot of Black people, this was about a system that had gotten away with murder for so long finally meeting some kind of limit.

Not guilty!

Never mind that he happens to be rich and have a great legal team and that you're never gonna get that kind of justice, if we want to call it that.

The point was, finally the system had met some kind of limit.

This is the problem of racism in the country, is that it ethically messes us up.

Right?

That because of these past histories of racism and the failure to address and deal with them, then we can see an injustice, and our sense of justice is you've got to give us one, you owe us one.

Gates: While the O.J.

verdict exposed the persistence of America's racial divisions... Angelou: Lift up your faces... Gates: It actually came at a time when many African Americans had substantial reasons to feel optimistic.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon this day breaking for you.

Gates: By the mid-1990s, America was in the midst of an economic boom, presided over by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat elected with the overwhelming support of Black voters.

Bill Clinton was surrounded by Black people.

I think he was surrounded by Black people the moment he was born.

He's so comfortable around Black people that often, you know, you look at him and say to yourself, "OK.

Really?"

Holder: There was at some really base, visceral level a connection that existed between the president and the African American community.

And he was a person who promised to do a great many things and did do, you know, a great many things.

Gates: Clinton appointed an unprecedented number of African Americans to high positions in his administration, and under his economic policies, the incomes of Black middle-class families rose.

The Black elite saw its fortunes improve dramatically.

And Black culture continued to flourish.

Duvernay: That time was just so...so great.

I came of age in the best time for pop culture for Black people.

I mean, literally, it was... The music was amazing in the early nineties.

It was the golden age of hip-hop.

It was also the golden age of Black cinema.

Gates: This era was marked by a wave of Black filmmakers telling their own stories... Max has a meeting with Clarence Thomas next week.

Gates: Television shows centered around Black characters... Maxine: Enough!

Enough!

I make this look good.

Gates: And Hollywood blockbusters bringing Black stars into every theater in America.

But all this success brought little to those who needed it most.

Even President Clinton could provide few answers for the African Americans who still lived in hardcore poverty, and as time passed, under pressure from political opponents, his administration adopted policies that seemed to suggest that poor people were largely responsible for their own condition, an idea that fell especially hard on Black America.

Pattillo: What we see during the Clinton era is this emphasis on what individuals should do.

So in welfare, in immigration, in crime, and in housing, he was a "personal responsibility" Democrat.

Clinton: This bill puts government on the side of those who abide by the law, not those who break it... Gates: In 1994, Clinton signed new crime legislation that put another 100,000 police officers on the street, added a federal "3 strikes" provision, and poured billions of dollars into the construction of more prisons.

Spence: The omnibus crime bill was, at the time, the largest piece of crime legislation ever passed.

If you look at the slope of incarceration, right, it goes up.

It's not straight.

It's not, like, a straight line from '72 to now.

It's a curve, and that curve really starts to curve up under Clinton's watch.

Brazile: I think they went too far.

I mean, it was a "tough on crime" era.

I mean, part of the Republican mantra was low taxes, smaller government, and tough on crime.

But Bill Clinton tried to out-tough the Republicans.

And as you know, recently he basically said, "I made a mistake."

[Door creaking] Gates: Almost 1/4 of a million more people were incarcerated during Bill Clinton's presidency than Ronald Reagan's, and a disproportionate number of them were Black.

By the late 1990s, African American men, just 6% of the general population, made up nearly half of all inmates, leaving a terrible vacuum in Black communities.

West: It's resulted in the disempowerment of their families, of communities.

It's resulted in a tearing apart of bonds, and it's resulted in an escalating sense of depression and despair when you're locked in in that way.

Sharpton: You're talking about my friends.

We couldn't have reunions because there wasn't nobody there.

Everybody was locked up or dead, and connected from the war on drugs to just locking us up, just locking us up.

If I hadn't been in the church, I probably would have been one of them to go down, because mostly everybody else I knew did.

Gates: Unwilling to give in to despair, Black men tried to come together.

We came here to be heard, so we came here to make some noise.

[Chanting "We are one!"]

Dick Gregory: I love you!

As of 10: 00 this morning, we reached one million Black men!

[Cheering] Gates: On October 16, 1995, African American men from all walks of life converged on Washington, D.C., drawn together by a shared sense that something needed to change.

Man: This is about respect, unity, and love for the brothers.

And we're trying to get something out of this, out of life.

We're tired of being behind everything.

We want to be in charge sometimes.

We want to unify, and that's what this is about--unity.

Look at all these brothers round here.

Cobb: There were one million African American men gathering in the nation's capital simply to talk about our realities as this portion of the population-- the population with the lowest life expectancy, the population that is, you know, highly marginalized economically, and the most incarcerated segment of the American population.

It was important, and I thought I had to be there to witness it.

Men: We are here!

We are here... Williams: I was at the Million Man March.

I think it was very important to try to bring Black men back to their families, to stop this killing in these communities.

To stop the disrespect of women, and to really find and claim our place in America.

[Applause] Gates: It was one of the largest Black political demonstrations in American history.

The trouble was, for all its good intentions, the March embraced a strange contradiction.

Speaker after speaker attacked a racist American system but also called on Black men to take responsibility for their own lives.

Spence: The then-Black mayor of Detroit, Dennis Archer, he's giving a speech, and everybody was cheering, was cheering, was cheering, "Take responsibility, take responsibility," and I remember him saying, "If the city doesn't pick up the garbage, pick it up yourselves!"

And everybody's cheering, like, "Yeah!

"If the city doesn't pick up the trash, pick it up yourselves!"

And I'm like... Wait a second.

That's what we pay taxes for.

Right?

Again, it's this sense that...that the government doesn't have responsibility, it's you.

[Cheering] Gates: In the end, more than anything, the March crystallized the central question facing Black America at the time.

Were the problems we faced really of our own making, or were they part of the unfinished business that the civil rights movement never had a chance to resolve?

[Wind blowing] Man: Hurricane Katrina is about to unleash her fury on the Gulf of Mexico tonight.

Different man: 140-mile-per-hour winds, a strong category-4 storm.

Different man: This is what everyone feared-- the storm surge.

Take a look out here.

Gates: On August 29, 2005, I turned on the television and couldn't believe my eyes.

Hurricane Katrina had hit New Orleans, catastrophically damaging antiquated levees and flooding 80% of the city.

Nearly 100,000 people found themselves stranded without food or shelter in a rising tide of deadly water, and it looked like almost all of them were Black.

It was agonizing to watch.

Brittney Cooper, voice-over: All of those Black folks stranded on rooftops, waving American flags, came floating through the television screen, and it was a stark moment because here we are, in the 21st century, and Black people are still having to make the case to their country that they are citizens and, therefore, worthy of being rescued.

Man: You got a 3-week-old infant out here.

How is a 3-week old infant going to be able to survive out here with no milk, no water?

Different man: They need medical attention.

They got--they got old people that's sick.

They got people dying in there.

Gates: Katrina laid bare the unfinished work of the civil rights movement... Woman: We are in desperate need, and we are Americans.

It is terrible.

Gates: Revealing the deep vulnerability of the poorest Black communities and making it painfully clear that race remained a decisive factor in American life.

Oprah Winfrey: I was in such shock.

Why were so many of the people Black and poor?

Because when you're Black and poor, you're the most disenfranchised, and that's why.

Ava Duvernay: The Hurricane Katrina spectacle was really what it was-- devastating, tragic, horrific-- revealed the great divide that we know is there and, you know, we don't talk about, but for anyone to say that it wasn't disregard based on race and class is to be disingenuous about what we all saw.

Woman: People are dying.

They're dying.

Babies are dying.

Gates: The disaster was compounded by the government's slow response, which seemed to express a deep indifference to the victims.

Two days after the storm, President Bush finally came to view the devastation from the safety of Air Force One, never even setting foot in the city while on the ground the casualties and the chaos were mounting.

Man: They told us, "If you want to be rescued, go to the Superdome."

All of a sudden, now they're telling us, "Go to the bridge."

Oh, we have very few resources.

What are we supposed to do?

Down, boy.

Man, voice-over: Tonight, the real concern is looting.

Gates: Relief efforts were also hampered by the media's lurid stories of crime sprees in the flood zone, which isolated the victims even further.

Desperate, hundreds of Black people attempted to escape on their own by walking to suburbs across the river.

They were stopped by police officers and local residents with rifles.

Jelani Cobb: The people in surrounding areas armed themselves to prevent Black New Orleans residents from getting out of the city.

That is a direct kind of metaphor for what had been happening in American cities-- White people who've managed to escape and literal barriers to Black people getting out of the cities and-- and going to where they are.

You had to do what you had to do, you know?

If you had to shoot somebody, you had to shoot somebody.

We shot them.

Woman: They were looters.

In this neighborhood, we take care of our own.

Gates: So how could this be?

How could race relations have been so bad leading to such disastrous consequences?

I think it's hard for America to see this poor, Black mass, this poor, Black mass of people.

People are scared of that.

They don't know what to do with that.

They-- they just don't, so we're still grappling with how to see us as whole human beings, as whole people.

Gates: Trymaine Lee, a young journalist, stayed in the city throughout the disaster trying to report what was actually happening.

Please get us some help.

Please.

Lee, voice-over: Thousands of people gathered here.

Children, uh, folks who needed medicine, families with nowhere else to go.

Why weren't people bringing food or medical supplies?

Those early days, there were so many rumors of rape and murder and mayhem, and--because we're dealing with poor, Black people--it seemed plausible, right?

See, the officials say, like, "What are we gonna do?

They're killing each other."

Right, so these were the stereotypes.

The stereotypes.

People being victimized by stereotypes of themselves, and all they wanted to do was survive.

That's right.

We talk about these young thugs, these young guys with they dreadlocks and their pants hanging down off their behinds.

They were breaking in places and getting medicine for old people.

Really?

They were breaking in and getting food for people.

They were keeping people safe.

Somehow, that wasn't reported on my television.

That wasn't reported because the image, the optics of the scary, Black mass of looters, right?

And if you stereotype them, that gets you off the hook.

Oh, that's right.

"We would help them, but they just animals."

Because they were poor and Black, and "who cares?"

Right?

We've seen that time and again, that "who cares about them?"

I hate the way they portray us in the media.

If you see a Black family, it says they're looting.

See a White family, it says they're looking for food.

Gates: After 4 excruciating days, Rapper Kanye West on a telethon for Katrina's victims suddenly blurted out what many of us were feeling.

The most tragic loss of all.

George Bush doesn't care about Black people.

Cobb: There are hundreds of American citizens floating in the streets, and the immediate response that we receive is a flyover.

Even for the relatively high bar of disbelief in this country in terms of what can happen to you as a Black person, this even manages to exceed that.

Gates: Katrina revealed America at its worst, at its most callous, its most racist, but it didn't reveal America in its entirety.

Our nation still had the capacity to surprise.

Days after the flooding, an official delegation visited evacuees in Houston, Texas.

What's your name, sweetie?

Gates: Among the visitors was America's only Black senator-- Barack Obama.

Obama: The emergency response has been entirely inadequate and unacceptable.

Gates: It was refreshing to hear a politician speak so frankly, and Obama wasn't done.

Days later, he addressed the United States Senate detailing the systemic racial problems that underlay the tragedy.

The people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane.

They were abandoned long ago to murder and mayhem in their streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

Now, that's the deeper shame of this past week.

Gates: Looking back, this was a critical moment in Obama's career, a moment when his potential became clear... I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.

Gates: But less than two years later when he announced that he was going to run for president, many African Americans, myself included, didn't believe he had a chance.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, voice-over: When Barack Obama begins to run, I was skeptical not of him as a candidate.

I mean, I--I appreciated him as a candidate.

I was skeptical that he would be able to win.

No one saw that this country was prepared to elect an African American to the presidency.

It just wasn't something that was on people's radar.

At that time, I think there were 4 Black people in this country who thought that a Black person could be elected to the presidency, and they all lived at the same address on the south side of Chicago.

Gates: Obama's rise was driven in part by circumstance.

George Stephanopoulos: The White House calls these difficult times.

Others freely use the r-word-- "Recession."

Gates: In 2008, our country was adrift.

Brian Williams: Big trouble for millions of American homeowners... Gates: Slipping into a financial crisis... [Gunfire] and mired in a struggle against global terror, Obama promised to stop the war in Iraq and redirect our economy.

He seemed to offer a genuine alternative, but even so, he faced a tremendous obstacle.

Man: The big question-- can he really win?

I just don't think he has a legitimate shot.

I think the-- I think Republicans will tear him apart.

I don't want to sound prejudiced or anything, but for one, um, I'm not going to-- I don't want to vote for a--a colored man to be our president.

I just don't think America is ready for a Black president.

Gates: From the outset, Obama's race was a constant factor in his candidacy, and it underscored a daunting math problem.

Even if every Black person in the country voted for him, he wouldn't come close to winning.

He needed a broader coalition.

Jeffries: It was like, Wait a minute.

You know, this--this--this is dependent upon White folk going into that ballot box, uh, and--and pulling this lever for this--this person of color, African American, will be completely unprecedented, uh, and--and I just--i just knew it would be enough White folk who got in there and just before they pulled that--that lever, said, "I just can't do it," you know?

One day, there may be a Black president, but there will never be a Black president named Barack Obama.

[Laughter] Ladies and gentlemen, that's too Black.

[Laughter] Gates: To my astonishment, Barack Obama rose above America's racial divide.

Obama: Yes, we can.

There's nothing we cannot do.

If you decide you want change, we will have change!

Crowd: Yes, we can!

Yes, we can!

Yes, we can!

Gates: He drew in voters by articulating a vision of our nation's shared moral values, invoking the ideals of the civil rights movement.

Obama: If you believe that the dream has to be kept alive for those who still hunger for justice... Vincent Brown, voice-over: He was speaking to what I think was the most important desire of most Americans at the time, which was to really heal the divisions that had been created in this country, and the civil rights story had been a positive story that could be identified in the presence of Barack Obama, so in some ways, I think, Barack Obama was very savvy about tapping into that strain of American mythology-- this is a free country that's always getting better and better and better and that we're making progress.

Oprah: There are those who say that it's not his time, that he should wait his turn.

I wouldn't be where I am if I waited on the people who told me it couldn't be.

[Crowd cheering] Man: Barack Obama stunned the political establishment and much of the country with his clear and decisive victory in Iowa.

Different man: Barack Obama, the campaign's freshest face, has now emerged as its frontrunner.

[Kanye West's "Touch the Sky" playing] Gates: Obama proved to be a very skilled candidate, attracting high-profile supporters and building an impressively diverse coalition.

George Clooney: You know, I'm an Obama guy.

My wife and I, uh, support, uh, Barack Obama.

Kanye: You gonna touch the sky Cooper, voice-over: We had a shift in 2008, right?

First, we went from, "Not in our lifetimes will this ever happen," to, "Oh, my God, in our lifetimes this is about to happen."

Kanye: You gonna touch the sky Gates: But Obama's lead was never secure.

Jeremiah Wright: And they will not only attack you if you try and point out what's going on in White America, U.S.

of KKK A. Gates: In March 2008, recordings of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama's Chicago church, began to circulate in the media.

Wright condemned the United States as fundamentally racist and called out White America for its historic abuse of Black people.

Wright: Government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a 3-strike law, and then wants us to sing "God Bless America."

No, no, no, not God bless America.

God damn America-- that's in the bible-- for killing innocent people.

Gates: Obama's opponents seized on the Wright controversy, hoping to damage the multiracial coalition that Obama was working so hard to build, but instead of trying to avoid the issue, Obama confronted it head on, acknowledging the very real grievances behind Wright's words and appealing to our country's desire to overcome its past.

Obama: The anger is real.

It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

Gates: The speech saved his candidacy.

Obama: America can change.

That is the true genius of this nation.

What we have already achieved gives us hope, the audacity to hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Woman: I've been here since, what, 7:15.

Different woman: I've been here since 6:50.

However the outcome is, I'm part of it.

Thank you.

Wait.

She's OK?

Your ballot was cast.

You're OK.

Gates: On election day, as I saw voting lines stretching all the way down streets and around blocks, I told myself that, no matter what happened, Barack Obama already had made history.

He had already gone so much further than any African American candidate for president before him, but, of course, I wanted him to win.

Donna Brazile: Dr.

King said, one day, we would be judged by the content of our character.

It happened.

David Gregory: Very important news-- Ohio has gone for Obama.

Brazile, voice-over: This wasn't just the Black vote.

This was the majority of Americans voting.

Senator Barack Obama will carry the state of Virginia.

Man: And in Minnesota, it goes to Obama.

Different man: And Delaware, as well, for Senator Obama.

Pennsylvania has gone to Obama.

Keith Olbermann: The states of California, Washington... Charles Gibson: Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States.

[Crowd cheering] Crowd: Yes, we can!

Yes, we can!

Yes, we can!

Gates: For myself and for virtually every Black person I knew, it was awe-inspiring.

None of us, not a single one of us, had grown up believing we would live to see this day.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

[Crowd cheering] it's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.

[Crowd cheering] Gates: The victory offered African Americans of all generations a chance to celebrate and reflect.

To young people, like my daughters, it seemed to promise a new age.

To civil rights veterans, like my friend Charlayne Hunter-Gault, it felt like the culmination of a lifelong struggle, and Obama's inauguration was something she had to see in person.

Hunter-Gault: I had to be there on that really cold day [Chuckles] as a small part of that movement that made his election possible.

Man: The President Elect of the United States-- Barack H. Obama.

Whoo!

Hunter-Gault, voice-over: It was a wonderful camaraderie, but I had to walk away because, uh, the people that I felt the closest to... [Sniffles] [Sniffles] s--s--some of them couldn't be there... I know.

And I could.

Mm-hmm.

I found myself humming that old freedom song, you know-- "We've come a mighty long way," And, uh, then I went back and listened to the first Black president take the oath of office.

Yeah.

Ha!

I, Barack Hussein Obama... I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear... Jeffries: I mean, that was a major milestone.

It was symbolic and historically symbolic.

To have an African American family represent the United States is something that no one could have predicted, and it says a lot about where we are and where we can go as a nation.

Cooper: I was so proud of Barack Obama.

I was proud that there were 4 Black women and girls living in the White House.

There's something absolutely awesome about that.

You know, there are Black hair care products at the White House, you know?

There's pink oil moisturizer in the White House, which is, you know, iconic.

Like, that--that matters.

That matters representationally.

It matters culturally.

It matters.

That image of seeing him on every TV every day being the leader of the free world, it showed that America has made significant progress.

You better believe, no matter what his policies are you can never change the fact that he has changed this country and the world forever.

Wanda Sykes: I got to tell you, I don't care why we have a first Black president.

I'm just happy to have one.

I am.

I love seeing him take that stroll across the White House lawn, boy.

It's just beautiful.

You see him, he's just walking across the lawn.

[Laughter] Gates: Of course, Obama's victory resonated well beyond the bounds of Black America.

There were celebrations across the country... Obama!

Obama!

Obama!

Gates: And around the globe.

Obama!

Gates: Uniting people of all races and all nationalities in a sense of optimism.

Some even began to voice the idea that the United States had undergone a fundamental transformation... Terry Morgan: The election of Barack Obama proves something once again about this country.

We can overcome.

We can overcome, uh, our own history.

I think we are moving towards a post-racial America.

I forgot he was Black tonight for an hour.

Gates: But while the new color of our leadership aroused excitement, the job of actually governing the United States presented sobering challenges.

Tom Brokaw: It is the second consecutive year for rising poverty rates and falling income after years... Gates: Obama now had to confront the same problems that had led voters to support him in the first place.

Lester Holt: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae both have lost billions on bad loans and... Gates: Economic insecurity and the fear of terrorism stoked class tensions, tribalism, and distrust.

Soon, Obama became a lightning rod, and race, always useful as a weapon to divide, took center stage.

Woman: Mixed in the anti-Obama crowds over recent weeks, racial slurs against the president of the United States.

Different woman: Quote, "Another 4 years of this n-word.

Maybe he'll get assassinated this term."

Vann Newkirk: You saw people who had not expected that a person of color would become president, that a person with an international background would become president.

They reacted accordingly.

People were sort of questioning whether he was really an American, and those were not auxiliary things.

They became the core of political energy in America in the decade since.

Brown: There was no year zero when Barack Obama was elected.

We've had a country riven by racial politics since its founding, since its origins.

That's not going to change with the election of one Black president.

Woman: I believe that he is a Muslim.

Man: You do?

Yes.

How many of you believe that here?

He is.

Man: He's not natural-born.

You must be natural-born to be president of the United States.

We really don't have a natural citizen of the United States being in the presidency.

All I want to do is see this guy's birth certificate.

Katie Couric: President Obama went on national television today and did what no other president has ever even been asked to do-- prove he's a natural-born U.S.

citizen.

Gates: Have you been as surprised as some of us have been at the backlash against a Black man being elected to the presidency?

I think if you go back to that election in 2008, there was a really positive feeling that, um, existed in the country, but over time, um, those who were opposed to him went to really, really bad places.

The reforms-- the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

Joe Wilson: You lie!

[Booing] That's not true.

Holder: When you have a congressman get up and say, "You lie," you know, to the president of the United States-- unheard of.

Unheard of, and, you know, I'll be honest with you.

Let's go straight-- let's go there.

That would not have been said to a White president, you know?

It would not have been.

Oh, people thought initially we're--we're entering a post-racial period.

We wouldn't have to talk about race, and I think the reality has been that his election has meant that we've had to confront in a more stark way, um, racial issues.

People say, "Well, Obama's just being judged as the president.

"We don't see race.

His race doesn't come into account," but his race is ever-present.

It dictates how he interacts with voters, what he can talk about, how he expresses anger.

Barack Obama can never be the angry, Black man.

He can't.

And that's why I invited Luther, my anger translator, to join me here tonight.

[Cheering and applause] We count on the press to shed light on the most important issues of the day.

And we can count on Fox News to terrify old, White people with some nonsense!

Gates: While the political backlash against Barack Obama exposed the tenacity of America's racial divide, it played out paradoxically amidst a popular culture filled with ever more diverse visions of Black life... Preston: Let's shotgun it.

Miranda: That means every test in the book--ct... Gates: Much of it created by African Americans who had grown up in a multicolored nation and wanted to see their world reflected in the mainstream.

Outkast: Hey ya Shonda Rhimes: It seemed weird to me that we watch these TV shows and everybody, "A," looks the same.

That's not what my world looks like.

Mm-hmm.

That's not what my friends look like.

That's not reality.

Gates: Shonda Rhimes embodied this rising generation.

I was born after the civil rights movement had sort of taken hold.

Gates: In 2005, she created "Grey's Anatomy," the first top-10 network show ever produced by an African American woman.

She followed it up with "Scandal," which featured a Black political fixer... It's handled.

Gates: Who's having an affair with the White, married president of the United States, a character no Black person would have dared to create, even a generation ago.

Gates: The committee of Blackness would have called you in and said, yes.

"Shonda, our people cannot afford this."

You have defied the politics of respectability.

Well-- Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

Ha!

I'm not.

Ha ha ha!

People were saying, this character, Olivia Pope, really needed to be a role model for young women and blah, blah, blah.

I don't believe in that.

I mean, true equality is, Black women get to be whatever they want to be.

To me, being a role model means that you have to be seen through, like, White folks' eyes, like we're-- That's something my mother would say.

You know, we're worried about how they're going to look at us.

Yes.

I wasn't worried about that.

Gates: Shonda's confidence has been well-rewarded, yet her success also reveals one of our nation's starkest contradictions.

While White America eagerly embraces Black stars and Black culture, it does so while still clinging to old prejudices about everyday Black people.

Jeffries: America has a fascination with stardom, and so artists and entertainers can be embraced, uh, regardless of their color, by White Americans, but what hasn't happened is that those same attributes that White Americans hold so dear, they're not projecting onto, uh, the African American kid on a corner with a hoodie.

Gates: In essence, even after electing a Black president, our country was still struggling with many of the same racial issues that had confronted us for decades.

Marcus Walker: OK, class.

Good morning, good morning.

Good morning, and welcome.

Gates: This is Excel, a public school in South Boston... Segregation getting worse.

Gates: A place that illuminates both our present and our past.

In 1974, this school was a focal point of the notorious Boston busing crisis, a battleground site in White America's effort to resist integration.

Man: The buses brought in 56 Black students from Roxbury while the Whites stood outside and jeered.

Boy: They just want to start trouble.

They think they own the place.

I got news for them.

They're going to be dead if they try anything else.

Gates: As a nation, we like to think we've moved on from these ugly scenes, but the facts are more complicated.

Walker: First of all, what was the goal of busing?

What was the-- what was the whole point in the first place?

Dennis.

Dennis: To have them go to, like, schools that were mo--mostly, like, all Whites and everything and have-- have everybody come together as one.

Walker: Yes.

Yeah, so the whole point was to have everybody kind of mixed together, OK?

Gates: Before the busing crisis, nearly every child at this school was White, and, while busing produced a brief period of integration, it didn't last.

Today almost all the students here are people of color.

Walker: Where are the White students going?

What's going on?

What does it mean?

Go ahead, Trace.

They're either in a private school or they moved out of Boston.

Walker: Yeah.

Gates: How do you make sense of the resegregation of the school system?

I don't think the average person sees the Boston public schools as still being a segregated school system.

My students, they see there's just an overabundance of cultural diversity in school, the nationalities.

It's literally on their faces, uh, absolutely.

Right?

Absolutely.

But White America wasn't represented.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Do your students ever talk about how non-White--ha ha!-- their school is?

We--we've had that conversation.

We're still having that conversation.

Why does our school look the way it does, um, and not just racially, but also economically?

Excel high school, South Boston high school, is almost 86%, um, just this school, is low-income.

It's deep as far as the effect that poverty has on--on my students.

Walker: Today do people that are low-income... Gates: Excel reflects a national trend.

Many African American children today are as racially and socioeconomically isolated as they were in the 1960s.

More than a third attend schools that are less than 10% White and disproportionately low-income, all of which flies in the face of a vast body of evidence on the power of integration.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Integration does this magical thing.

It suddenly allows Black kids to get the same education that White kids are getting.

I think sometimes we get confused, and we think that there's something about sitting next to White kids that makes Black kids smart.

There's something about sitting next to White kids that allows Black kids to get the same textbooks and to get the same instruction and to get physics in their high school, and that's really it.

Gates: The condition of America's public schools is just one aspect of our failure to fulfill the ideals of the civil rights movement.

The ongoing assault on voting rights marks another.

Man: The Supreme Court upheld a controversial new Voter I.D.

Law in Texas.

Different man: The one in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which is requiring people to show photo I.D.

in order to vote.

Woman: Over 600,000 voters, mostly Blacks and Latinos, don't have this kind of identification.

Gates: Since 2010, dozens of states have passed voter identification laws that have served to restrict African American access to the polls.

Jeffries: Now we're seeing not in a 1960s way of just disenfranchise a whole race of people, but just make it hard enough, difficult enough for a handful-- a couple thousand, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people-- and that's enough to win any major election.

America did not stand up and did not march and did not sacrifice to gain the right to vote for themselves and for others, only to see it denied to their kids and their grandchildren.

Brazile: People died for the right to vote, and now when you go to register, bring every form of I.D.

you can find.

Bring your driver's license.

Bring your marriage license.

Bring your passport.

Bring it all.

Bring a utility bill.

I mean, how sad is that in America?

Gates: But nothing illustrates our nation's persistent racial inequality like the problem of mass incarceration.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and that population is disproportionately Black.

Lawrence D. Bobo: We have a circumstance of this persistent and rising joblessness in urban, Black communities, and rather than a major investment in education or training or jobs, we get a major investment in policing and prison building and incarceration.

Holder, voice-over: We looked for simple solutions to complex problems, as opposed to asking ourselves, "What are the sociological reasons?

"What are the social dysfunctions, the--the deficits "That we see in the people who are committing these crimes?

What are we going to do to try to deal, um, with those?"

Thought was never to deal with those.

The thought was always simply to lock them up, get them away from us, and, um, hopefully, they'll stay there for extend periods of time.

Gates: Mass incarceration has become an international embarrassment, imposing an enormous financial and human cost on our nation, yet the consequences of our prison policies will not be easy to reverse.

People with criminal records face an array of challenges trying to re-enter society.

They can be barred from jobs, denied financial aid for college, and banned from public housing.

It's no wonder many end up back in prison.

Sherrilyn Ifill: Now that we recognize that mass incarceration is out of control, how are we going to deal with it?

Are we just going to say, "Well, we should stop.

We should lower some of these sentences"?

What do we do with the lives of the people who were harmed by the system, and what do we do with the problem that we didn't want to deal with, which is young people who need jobs, who need support?

Gates: These questions brought me back to Ronald Day, whom I first met in the South Bronx, where he grew up.

So I lived right in the building right here, and one of my earliest memories at maybe 10 or 11 years old is seeing a guy get stabbed right across the street and run--and walking up the block.

Gates: As a young man, Day was a drug dealer.

He spent 15 years in prison.

He knows firsthand the daunting obstacles faced by ex-convicts... Day: When I knew that I was going to be released, there was a--a tremendous amount of trepidation.

I knew that I wanted to--to get a job and to take care of myself, but I knew that there were a lot of individuals who said that, but they ended up back in prison.

Gates: Ronald was determined to avoid that fate.

He's earned a master's degree, and he's working on his PhD, and today, he's an executive at the Fortune Society, an organization that works with ex-offenders.

Ronald and his colleague Stanley Richards, who also served time in prison, are now dedicated to helping former prisoners like themselves.

Education area, so this is where we teach people the soft skills about getting a job-- how to answer the conviction question, how to fill out a resume.

Man: OK, so that--that's that's an approach.

That's an approach, that, but that's... Richards, voice-over: The bar organization identified 47,000 statutory barriers to-- for people coming home from prison.

Gates: 47,000?

47,000 local, state, and federal barriers to employment.

Day: You need to remove these barriers so that people can rebuild their lives and reclaim their lives, to be able to say, "Sure.

I was involved in crime, "But now I turned that whole process around, "went from being someone who was locked up "and thrown away and thought didn't have any value "to went to college to earn the master's degree to earning the PhD."

So you are the criminal justice system's worst nightmare?

Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

At one point, I was the one who was devastating my community, selling drugs, and robbing, and now I'm giving back in ways that I couldn't even have imagined back then.

I'm raising my family in the Bronx.

Um, I work.

I give back.

I contribute, and I keep my voice in the mix... Yeah, and it shows-- so that we can change policy.

It shows the capacity of people to change.

Man: But we can get better and better and better.

Richards, voice-over: We don't give up on people.

We know that by holding people accountable, by providing them some support, and by giving them the opportunity to reclaim their life, it works.

It works.

Gates: Day and Richards are inspiring, but they're well aware that helping people on their way out of prison is only one part of the solution.

To reduce our incarcerated population, we're going to have to alter our fundamental assumptions about race, assumptions that inform the very way we police.

Cobb: One of my formative memories was me coming home from a baseball game in my uniform, and a police officer pulls--pulled up and, uh, put me up against a mailbox and frisked me to see if I was carrying any weapons, and, um, I was wearing a baseball uniform and carrying a glove, but this had been something that I had been prepared for by my parents because they understood this relationship between Black men and police.

It's assumed that you're a suspect when you're Black on the street before anybody knows anything else about you, right?

Automatically, you're assumed to be a potential disturbance of the peace.

That's not something that everybody has to deal with, um, and it's not something that is comfortable for people to deal with, right, to always be scared that every time you see a police officer, they might be thinking you're a suspect in a crime that happened someplace else, right?

That's not full citizenship.

That's not full equality.

Gates: On a shocking number of occasions, racial profiling has led to tragedy.

These senseless deaths often disappeared quickly from the news cycle if they were ever noted at all.

That began to change on August 9, 2014, when a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown during an altercation in Ferguson, Missouri.

Man: Ran.

Police got out, ran after him.

Gates: The conflicting accounts of what led to the shooting have never been reconciled, but, regardless of the circumstances, the sight of Brown's body lying in the street for hours was an outrage.

[Barks] Cooper, voice-over: The picture of his body in the street is being tweeted, and they still haven't removed it.

Why is this happening?

Why is this boy lying dead in the street?

Black people know what it means when a Black kid is killed by somebody that is White with power, and the body is left there to terrorize the community.

You took my son away from me.

You know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate?

You know how many Black men graduate?

Not many because you bring them down to this type of level where they feel like, "I don't got nothing to live for, anyway."

Man: Hands up!

Crowd: Don't shoot!

Hands up!

Don't shoot!

Hands up!

Don't shoot!

Gates: The night after Brown's death, local residents gathered in protest, and the police response shocked the country.

It looked more like a scene from war-torn Iraq than a suburb in Missouri.

Cooper, voice-over: It was the tanks that made everybody pay attention.

Conservative, White folks, Republicans, Democrats, and White people across the spectrum saying, "Why do you have a tank in Ferguson, Missouri?"

Why are the police in military riot gear?"

Man: You must disperse the area immediately.

You are in violation of the state-imposed curfew.

You are subject to arrest.

DeRay Mckesson, voice-over: The police had every type of machinery you could ever have, and we got tear-gassed, and I was like, "This is just not the America I know, right?

"Like, I cannot believe I'm getting tear-gassed when the police had killed somebody."

I was like, "This just isn't OK, right," and I'm just one of many who, like, stopped being silent because of--because of what happened.

Gates: DeRay Mckesson, a former math teacher, was appalled by what he saw on the streets of Ferguson.

Crowd: I am Mike Brown!

Man: No justice!

He left his job to become a full-time activist, joining a rising groundswell of outrage unified by a simple but powerful slogan that had been created just a year before by 3 young women-- Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza.

I felt like it was important to have another voice out there that was saying, you know, "This isn't about "some deficiency that Black people have.

"This is actually about the racism that's in the DNA of this country," something like, "Black people, I love you.

"I love us.

We matter.

Our lives matter.

Black lives matter."

Crowd: Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

Cornel West: We know Black lives matter the way all lives matter, but unfortunately in America, you got to say, "Black lives matter," because when you say, "All lives matter," oftentimes you don't get to the Black lives.

[Crowd chanting] Gates: As protests sprung up all over the country... [Beep] don't touch me!

Police brutality continued to occur with disturbing frequency, captured by cell-phone cameras, dash cams, and handheld devices, then shared with the world.

Get out of the car!

Brazile: Watching those videos-- the video of Ms.

Bland, the video of--of Tamir Rice, the video of Eric Garner, "I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

I can't breathe," 11 times-- has stirred so many.

That has stirred something in so many.

Gates: Yet for all the pain and all the outrage, the killings continued.

Man: The police shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott.

Woman: An unarmed father of 4 with car trouble is no longer alive.

Woman: Police shooting that killed Alton Sterling.

Gates: And in case after case, what looked like hard evidence failed to yield convictions.

Man: It has happened again.

A grand jury has refused to indict yet another White police officer.

Woman: Cleveland grand jury's decision not to file charges against officers in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Gates: Each ruling, each tragedy fueled the growing movement, a movement that soon spread from city streets to sports arenas, from corridors of power to Hollywood.

Jesse Williams: There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of.

There has been no job we haven't done, there's no tax they haven't levied against us, and we've paid all of them, but freedom is somehow always conditional here.

Crowd: Well, you talk about... Gates: These calls for justice were amplified and intensified by popular culture.

Marchers: There will be no peace Sometimes I go off I go off I go hard, I go hard Gates: Summoning Americans of all colors to confront our deep-rooted racial issues and work together for change, but it soon became clear that some Americans wanted a very different kind of change.

Woman: Illegal citizens should be deported I'm sorry.

They are taking our jobs, our money, everything.

Donald Trump: We will make America great again!

Gates: Donald Trump's ascent took me by surprise, even though his message was painfully familiar.

Newkirk: When Trump comes out and says, "Make America great again," what does that mean?

Because I think to lots of Black people in this country, you're trying to think back, "OK.

When was America really great for me?

"Was it the sixties when we could not vote?

"Was it before then, when we couldn't go to schools "of our choosing, when we couldn't go to integrated schools?"

That is one of the most incredible dog whistle slogans.

It's not just going back in time.

It's going back in terms of power.

Jeffries: We get so caught up in saying, "Well, this is all about the economy and people who are being disgruntled."

Like, no it's not.

It's about racism.

When in America have we not been racist?

That grassroots mobilization on the right, centered and revolving around race and racism is what builds towards the election of Donald Trump.

[Band playing] Gates: Trump won the White vote across every age, gender, and class, and his presidency has brought a profound shift in America's racial landscape.

Wesley Lowery: The idea that here now in the White House we have a president willing to embrace this kind of White grievance and White identity politics, it signaled that this is now OK conversation, OK rhetoric for our public sphere, and so what we've now seen in the early years of the Trump administration has been this present physical presence of the darkest corners of our society.

White lives matter!

White lives matter!

Man: We came out here to protest for our identity as White Americans.

Everybody has the right to, uh, defend their own group, their own ethnic interests.

Gates: Nothing embodies our new reality more dramatically than the events of August 2017 when White supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, to preserve a Confederate monument.

Their rally rapidly turned violent... [Tires squealing] leaving one dead, 35 wounded, and a president who seemed unwilling to say who was at fault.

Trump: We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides.

Man: The president seemed to blame both the White nationalists and the counter-protesters equally.

Jeffries: One of the myths and misconceptions that we told ourselves as a nation was that racism will end when old White racists die off?

White supremacists: You will not replace us!

Jeffries: And so we're confronted in this moment where the face of visceral racism isn't some old person in rural Alabama.

It's some khaki-wearing young White guy in Charlottesville.

We only think it's an aberration because we want to pretend that there's perpetual progress in American history.

Racism gets a little bit less with each passing year.

No, it don't.

It just manifests itself in different ways.

[Shouting] Newkirk: This is something my grandfather told me.

"The Klan is always gonna come back one day," and I never believed him.

I thought, you know--I-- heh heh--"We're living in a new time, now, Grandpa."

And it turns out that, uh, my grandfather was right.

We've thrown away the delusion of post-racial society, where people embrace the fact that this is not only a racial society, it's a society of a racial hierarchy.

We're jumping up and down, "Oh, you can't say that!"

Why can't you say that?

Demand him do some-- demand him say something about it.

Hold on.

You--I'm sorry.

Gates: Yet for all the negativity of the moment, I still find reason to hope.

At the same time that we seemed to have experienced a resurgence of racism, we've also seen a groundswell of opposition as people of all colors, ages, and genders have come together to assert that America is-- and should always be-- a diverse nation.

Lowery: I think that the Trump era has mobilized an energy among Black Americans, among brown Americans, among most of the American left and center of our spectrum, a reminder that positive change is not an inevitability, that racial equality is not an inevitability.

That it's something that we have to wake up every single morning and work toward.

Cooper: Whenever I think about giving up or I think that this struggle is impossible, I remember that we're not the first generation of African Americans to experience great wins followed by great losses, that we may be losing now, but we won't lose forever, and that even when we feel like we will, that we have to look at our ancestors and remember that their struggles for us to be in this moment means that we don't have an excuse to quit.

[People shouting] [Siren] Gates: African Americans have indeed struggled for far too long to claim our rightful place in America.

Even so, surveying the last 50 years of our history--through all the highs and lows... We want justice!

We want justice!

I can't help but feel inspired.

What stands out to me most is the strength, the willingness--seen time and again--to fight against the odds, to stand and be counted, no matter the risk.

Looking back, seeing how hard we've fought, how far we've come, it fills me with hope.

Ifill: I don't know how you can be optimistic without looking at the past.

It's only through seeing that arc that you have the optimism that you can take it a step further.

Sometimes you make two steps forward, and you make one step back, but it doesn't mean that it's not a step on the journey.

Al Sharpton: My mother passed, and I stood up at her funeral and read a letter from the first Black president and thought about how, when she was growing up, she couldn't vote in that town till she was 39 years old, couldn't vote, for in one lifetime, to go from not being able to vote to a Black president, you can't say a lot hasn't happened.

Mckesson: The story of Blackness in America has always been making a way out of no way, defying the odds that we've been given, and keeping this sense of joy, like, in the midst of all of the trauma and pain, uh, and that keeps me hopeful.

Gates: 50 years ago, African Americans marched across this bridge, dreaming of a future in which they would finally take their place as full and equal citizens of the United States.

They were met with shocking violence, but they refused to be defeated.

Today America has been transformed, and African Americans have risen to undreamt-of heights.

Our journey is far from over, and yet still we press on with the talent and determination born of generations of resistance and hope and the unshakeable, determined belief that this land is our land.

Still, we rise.

Announcer: "Black America Since MLK" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

The companion book is also available.

To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-play-pbs.

Also available for download from iTunes.