Eric> It's a contentious period.

It's a violent period.

It's the era when the country has to come to terms with the consequences of the Civil War and the end of slavery.

Cassandra> We were supposed to reverse 246 years of American history.

Who does that?

Beverly> How do we construct citizenship, which Americans had never really done to any full constitutional extent up to that point?

Freedom and equality are different.

Eric> We're still, even today wrestling with some of these problems of equality and democracy and citizenship that were first laid out in Reconstruction.

>> These arguments that you hear today are not new.

They just keep getting recast with each generation.

(Crowd chanting: "When Black women are under attack,) ("What do we do?

Stand up for ourselves.")

Narrator> Reconstruction began during the Civil War and lasted until the dawn of Jim Crow in the 1890s.

The changes that occurred during this period were so significant that it has sometimes been called the nation's second founding.

During the war, 4 million enslaved African-Americans gained their freedom.

They went on to generate significant social change.

Constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction, prohibited slavery, promised civil rights to all people living under U.S. jurisdiction and citizenship to anyone born in the United States and outlawed racial discrimination in voting.

Voters elected 16 black men to Congress, and 2000 or more African-Americans held elected office across the South.

Formerly enslaved people could marry as they pleased and create their own places of worship.

In Southern states, established public education for Blacks and Whites.

Kids> "A - B - C" Narrator> Black Southerners led much of this progress, but by the 1890s, they largely had to fend for themselves.

Many White Southerners had always resisted the democratizing changes of Emancipation and Reconstruction.

By the 1890s, federal troops no longer intervened to protect African-American rights.

The Supreme Court denied their appeals and the Republican Party abandoned them.

Still, Black Americans continued to fight for rights and respect, facing discrimination, as well as violence and racial terror.

And the struggle continues today.

Reconstruction came to an end, but its promise of a free and equal society for all Americans remains unfulfilled.

♪ soft music ♪ Narrator> This program tells six stories that explore the connections between Reconstruction issues and contemporary American life.

♪ Althea> The county that I grew up in, Beaufort County, was the place where the blueprint for Reconstruction happened, where William Tecumseh Sherman made the plan and gathered a community.

With the idea of the 40 acres and the mule, a lot of the formerly enslaved could rebuild communities, rebuild themselves, and also rebuild families.

♪ After the Civil War, a lot of Blacks within the South moved around because people were trying to find their family members.

You know what happened to their children?

What happened to their mother, father in terms of the institution and the position of the Black family in the community?

It became a thing where you saw a child that needed someone to take care of them.

That child also became a part of the family because they needed someone.

The family itself isn't always about the biological kin.

It is about who is raised in the family.

♪ I'm always putting it in the perspective of how I see the Black family based on my own Gullah Geechie culture linked to the origin place in Sierra Leone, in that area in the rice coast area.

It's so similar, including the kinship patterns.

And when you're thinking about an African concept of family, it really is looking at the position of the mother.

And the mother is that critical element within the Black family in terms of the lineage and also uh, who's that strength in the household.

♪ music ♪ ♪ Dionne> So if it's dry rotted, then you're going to keep having like little small cracks, you know what I mean?

Like in the tread.

Akio> Oh yeah.

You're right.

Dionne> Or you're just going to have a straight up flat.

Dionne> In this family, because we are so uniquely put together and we've been put together at later parts in our life than other families are.

There's a lot of tenderness shared between us because everyone's trying to reinforce and develop trust (chatter) Akino> These are my wife's bonus kids.

We don't say step kids.

I met their mother in Okinawa, Japan, but she is Filipino.

We divorced 2012.

Dionne> We tried to look at the information- Let me let you answer that.

Akira> He's going to school too.

Akino> I met Dionne working at Big Lots as an assistant manager.

I came to find out we had a lot in common.

We had a lot of fun.

Then one date turned to a second date, second date turned to a third.

And...it's been bliss ever since.

She's... like one of the best thing that ever happened to me.

Akio> They look like tomatoes.

Akim> ...Gumbo.

Dionne>For someone who's always talking about being broke, you always talk about the next thing you're going to buy.

Akio> I don't know at first I didn't like her, but...she does like (we're) her own child...own kids And that's when I started to like love her as my own, and accept her into my life It's pretty cool.

I love her.

Akino> I might be the man of the house, but I am not the captain.

My wife is the captain.

You know, I'm not ashamed to say that to anyone.

Akino> ...Go drive the Porshe.

Dionne> Let's go drive the Porshe, but then show him my Mustang...

I'm way overprotective of the boys.

These are good old country boys.

However, urban, their clothes are, and their language, and their videos and their music, these are some Georgia boots, squirrel shooting, country boys, four-wheeling , you know, who... have just dropped into a city environment.

Akira> We didn't know how to clean up.

We couldn't cook.

(laughs) We didn't know anything about cars.

Akio> Well, I've been knew about cars.

But yeah, that's the hard thing.

Akira> And especially manners, because we did a lot of things back in the country that we can't really do in the city.

Akio> Yes.

Akira> Like a bonfire.

(All laugh) Dionne> Yeah.

I'm happy to talk about that.

As much as I know...

I'm working three jobs right now.

I have three identities in terms of the service I'm trying to give in a professional way.

I see young people who have made bad decisions, young people who were in, you know, in the wrong location.

I just really...struggle to protect my family from the things that I see, you know, every day.

And I think that's I think that's what all parents bonus or biological seek to do, want to do, try to do.

(Both laugh) Akino> That's how it is man.

Shoot, I don't have to sit there and pay all that money for those tires.

I work Friday through Monday and the business is Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The boys have been working since they were small.

So if it's something like a, a table assembly or delivery of a couch or something like that, send the boys.

The money that you make, put some of it away.

Dude, what's 5%?

That's nothing.

That means for every dollar you make, you can't get you can't put a nickel away?

Say, hey, I'm putting nickel in the penny jar.

Just 5% for right now.

Dionne> All of a sudden at 45 years old.

I'm dating, you know, a man that has children.

And I realize, oh okay, everybody's got we have to have family orientation because nobody was ready to automatically have nephews or automatically have grandkids.

Dionne> I have a lane for you to bowl in, and your shoes.

Aunt> But did he get the chicken?

Dionne> I think he did order the chicken.

Akino> Well, I wanted the boys to experience a grandmother, experience an aunt.

So, you know so we came up this family night.

My mother died a while back.

So they never really had a grandmother.

I think all the children that we have, need to experience as much love coming from all directions, you know, not just love for mom and dad.

That's just...that's just 180.

What about the love from grandma from aunty, from the neighbors?

That's a 360 love right there.

Dionne> Does your back hurt?

It took a while for them to figure out what do you do with a grandma.

Like, what's the difference, you know, with the grandma.

And we had to really show them this elevated status that an older matriarch, you know, gives you.

(Cheering) Grandma> Oh, it's so hard to be humble.

Dionne> Grandma's giving you birthday presents and you give her Mother's Day presents and aunties give you advice.

It's not mommy's technique.

Aunt> No.

Akino> Auntie Michelle.

She's a journalist.

They're learning from her.

She doesn't let you get away with anything.

She's going to... trust what you say, but she's going to verify it.

Aunt> Okay.

Get two elbows.

Akino> She's going to verify, trust and verify.

And the boys are doing the same thing.

They don't go out and just listen to their friends and say, well, the friend said that, the friend said that.

Nah.

Did you check it?

Did you check their references?

Oh, yes, sir we did.

Okay.

We're good.

We're good.

We're good.

Dionne> I think that's the important bit of extended family of having all of these different influences who have your best interest at heart and give you a place to rest and have respite, you know, so you don't feel like you're out in the world swimming upstream, fighting against everything by yourself.

Akino> We look after each other.

If one child is doing something on that street, oh, we will get a phone call.

Everybody has my number.

Everybody is authorized to grab that person, whoever that child is, by the ear and bring them to us.

Dionne> It's a really special and unique place, and it's really been nice for me that they have embraced the boys, embraced, you know, my family, you know, now that I'm not the bachelorette on the block, it's been really nice to be part of that fabric.

♪ Deirdre> Ever since the United States had been British colonial America, what marked citizenship typically was the ability to own property because owning property, A: helps to establish your manhood and your importance in the community, but it also builds wealth.

And so the reason why we remember the names of the great men of history is because they were also huge landowners.

They owned a lot of slaves.

They owned plantations.

They owned animals.

They owned homes.

And so property ownership was really linked to manhood.

But also it raised one's status within the community.

Black people were not always allowed to purchase land in the same ways that their White counterparts were.

And so you see this throughout the South.

What Black people are doing when they get the opportunity to own land, either it's gifted or they put together their pennies and their dimes and their dollars and they buy the land.

They don't do it for themselves.

They do it so that the community can grow and thrive.

What they do is create essentially a kind of fortress so that at least they know, out in the world, right.

They can't control what's going on there, but that they can control their crops.

They can control the narrative about their people in history in those schools.

They can continue to knit together their families that had been disrupted because of slavery.

This is the hope and the dream of the slave that Maya Angelou wrote about, that you could have this space still dedicated to the descendants in much the same way that it was in 1865 or 1866.

Right!

That, that's incredibly moving for me.

♪ soft piano music ♪ Narrator> Free Woods Farm is a living farm museum near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that demonstrates how free people farmed in the early days of Reconstruction.

O'Neal> What we try to do here at Free Woods Farm is to farm essentially the way they did with mules and plows and hoes and rakes.

We plant essentially the same thing they planted.

♪ Narrator> Free Woods Farm was created by members of the Free Woods community, descendants of freed people who were able to purchase their own land.

O'Neal> Some newly freed slaves from Long Woods plantation and Richmond Hill plantations were able to obtain land in this community, because of three White persons who made small tracts of land available right along the Waccamaw River.

We know where they were located.

My great grandfather owned one of them.

They were to pay for these tracts of land over a period of time with rice.

O'Neal> The original settlers, those newly freed slaves, called it Free woods, the woods that was free and that name sort of caught on and became the name of their new community the Free Woods community.

My family members all live along here.

My brother lives over here.

Geneva lives right up here, and this is my home right on the left here.

...of course when I was growing up all of this was farmland.

(sound of an engine starting) Narrator> James Smalls is a member of the Free Woods community.

He still farms his grandfather's land.

♪ James> My grandparents raised me and, of course, where we were at was on a farm.

So everything that I did was around that farming life.

I followed step by step right behind my grandfather or in front of him, beside him, where he went.

We had that we owned, I believe was right at 19 - 20 acres and I feel that we should keep it as long as we can just to have something of value.

Narrator> But as the Myrtle Beach area grows the owners of this historic land are under increasing pressure to sell to developers.

♪ O'Neal> This is where Henry Smalls grew corn.

This is what's happening to that corn field, right now.

James> It's hurtful to ride by and see I remember five years ago I was plowing that field there, but now there's ten houses there.

You know, so it doesn't take long for it to be developed.

It's all around me, but we not ready to part of it yet.

O'Neal> This this is Hattie Smalls property.

This is a one hundred acre tract and Ms. Hattie tried very desperately during her latter years to clear up the title to this property but was unsuccessful.

So far as I can determine, she did not get one penny for this property.

James> Whenever you don't have any place for you grands, great-great grands to put a house, we don't have any dirt for them to put a house on, you're in trouble.

You can't go to the store and get it for three dollars.

They will have to live wherever they can, but not where your family roots were.

Deirdre> This is about the historic preservation of really exceptional communities in the southern states and we need to preserve these as much as we preserve Civil War battlefields.

Right.

There's not been the same kind of efforts to preserve the land spaces that housed Black people right after the Civil War ended.

♪ Jennifer Dixon-McKnight> When we think about the end of the Civil War, education for African-Americans becomes something that is incredibly important.

So much so, that it wasn't uncommon to see classrooms throughout the South with students with age range from 5 to 81.

Where everyone is excited and invested in this, in this effort to become educated.

The church for the African-American community has been a bedrock.

It has been a cornerstone.

So the church becomes a place where everything in the Black community happens.

Your smaller, more rural communities didn't always have access to having schools being built within the communities, where church provides a place for that.

You have millions of children that need to be educated and you don't have teachers to educate them.

African-Americans needed spaces where they could be trained.

The majority of White institutions didn't allow African-Americans to be educated alongside White students.

African-Americans had to figure out ways to become educated in their own spaces.

Historically, Black colleges and universities were founded because there was a need.

HBCUs provide a space that helps build their sense of pride.

It helps build their sense of purpose.

It helps give direction and guidance.

All while keeping in mind that your situation, your circumstances, are unique.

Your growth and development, your acquisition of this degree, of this education is opposed.

It is not something that is going to be handed to you easily or freely.

We need to train you on how to maneuver in a world or in a nation that doesn't fully accept you.

And so the HBCUs become critical in that work.

In terms of education, the majority of teachers were women teaching gave them the opportunity to take on positions of leadership that they may not have had access to previously.

When we think about the importance of education and Black women being at the forefront of that, then we have to also recognize that they are community builders in the sense that they are laying foundation in terms of education and creating tradition and legacy for these young people that they're standing in front of on a daily basis.

Part of the effort in those schools early on was to not only churn out teachers, we need to have African-Americans going into African-American communities and helping to shore up our educational foundation.

So as we are training teachers to go into these communities, we are moving children through public education with the hopes that they will go on and gain training and education, that they can then bring back and continue to build the community.

♪ ♪ (crowd chatter) ♪ (crowd chatter) ♪ Briana> We met when we were about five.

We had just started kindergarten and there was just something about Maya.

We just clung to each other and we didn't have to say anything.

We just kind of understood each other.

Maya> It's really nice to have these past four years together before we go our separate ways for college.

Both of our parents are, you know, in academia.

And then I can speak for my mom too, having her be a professor.

I definitely have lots of resources through her, not just because of what she can provide to me through university, being able to afford dual enrollment classes there because I get a tuition discount.

But her also being able to have some kind of a title which enables her to have more opportunities to go directly to the source, like to the superintendent or to the school board.

Both> Come on Maya.

Maya> With how her job is, she has definitely more flexibility.

It's not 9 to 5, and so that's enabled her to be with me at every track meet or choir concert.

She's able to be a very involved parent.

That's not because she cares more, but just because of the privilege she has with her job.

She can contribute in different ways that maybe other parents would not be able to.

Briana> Can you come around and go to Ms. Shipman's...

Very similar to what Maya was saying, but I also had two parents, so if one couldn't make it somewhere, I had the other one to rely on.

And then I also had my grandparents.

They were there to support me whenever I needed them.

And like Maya was saying, our parents hold these titles and people are more willing to listen to them.

Dr. Hanks> I grew up in York, Alabama.

It is in Sumter County, one of the poorest counties in the United States of America, not just in Alabama.

♪ I went to York West End High School, which is still actually up and running, and I graduated from Sumter County High School, both predominantly Black.

And it was... the best experience of my life, the support of the teachers, how they were willing to support us as students.

12th grade year.

I get accepted to the University of Alabama.

When I get there and get ready to, you know, sign up for courses, I have no financial aid.

None of my paperwork has been processed.

They can't find it.

I have...

I can't go.

I can't go to college.

♪ My AP biology teacher... pays my tuition to go to the University of Alabama.

Here I am now.

Three degrees later.

And it started from Sumter County High School.

Nirmala>...and ask the proctors to give you some- >> -feedback.

Nirmala> As somebody who came from a different country, the most mind blowing thing in America was the public education.

The fact that every student had a right to a public education with their peers, not just because it was free, but because that was, for me, the symbol of what you would think of as a democratic, you know, a democratic ideal.

Both me and my husband were very committed to our daughter, going to a school where people looked like her and like, you know, Black people in our community who are diverse and who lived in our community.

I think this is, this is good.

... when parents like me stay in the school because we have social capital, we have economic capital, and we have also educational capital, we can be really good advocates for the school system.

Now, my daughter has not suffered the way a majority of her classmates have suffered because I'm a professor in the College of Education.

I have had other resources.

We've been trying really hard to be able to make sure that the school district can open up these resources for all the students.

The history has always been that public education has been a fight and we are going to continue to fight.

And that's okay to be... it's okay to have struggle, but it's not, it's not okay to lose hope.

(violin plays) Maya> We're both in orchestra together and our orchestra is combined with all of the three city schools.

I do wish sometimes that our high school looked a little bit more like that orchestra.

If there were more people who kind of had the resources that we had, I know that there would be a lot more.

You know, we'd have a lot more bargaining power here, to be able to get more attention drawn to the students who don't have that many resources.

Destiny> I want you to pull up, go to today's folder in Schoology and I want...

I came from a school system in an area that was primarily White and primarily at least... middle class, if not higher.

I felt like my high school was held to much higher expectations than it is here, especially with kids coming from like low income communities and stuff like that.

It's...a big thing where it's just like, okay, this is just this is what their family did and this is just what they're always going to do, you know?

And so it's, they kind of get stuck in that cycle.

All right, Daniel, what I want you to do is I want you to take the slinky and just...

I feel like I have really high opinions and really like high hopes of them.

And I feel like it's something that maybe a lot of other people, not necessarily just in the school system, but just in general, like, don't push enough on them.

Somebody tell me which way the energy is.

When I have a student that's not coming to school, you know, and I'm like, I haven't seen this kid in two weeks.

Where is he?

And I'm calling home when I'm calling home.

And I finally get at a parent and she's like, I didn't even know he wasn't coming to school.

I work night shift and he's supposed to get himself up and go to school.

Daniel, you stay still this time.

All right.

What can we do to make sure that he gets here?

And not just that that's 100% on her, but what can we do in conjunction with the parents to make sure that that happens?

Dr. Hanks> As parents, we do have to show up.

And, we have to look at the whole picture.

Why are the parents not showing up, you know, and what other ways can parents show up?

Does everything have to be during the school day?

Are there alternate times that we can make things happen?

♪ It can't just be about my kid.

It has to be about what's in the best interest of all of our kids.

And so I think that's one way we solve the problem, is stop thinking about, well, what's just best for us, what's best for all of our kids, because they're going to grow up into citizens and then they're going to have to run this community.

♪ Then my only worry was for Christmas, ♪ ♪ what would be my toy?

♪ ♪ (cheers and applause) Brianna> Hi, my name is Brianna Hanks, and I will be attending the University of West Alabama.

Go Tigers.

It's a bit unfair to hear about more, I guess, privileged communities in this town, how they're open to more opportunities than we are.

(applause) But I wouldn't trade going here because I've met some really great people and people who have that potential to be just as privileged as other people.

♪ ♪ Beverly> I grew up in the shadow of the monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest, and I can say that as a child growing up in Memphis, it took a while the kind of understand know why is this thing here or Confederate Park?

This is Memphis, 20th century, so why do we need a Confederate Park?

♪ Some people will say that taking down these monuments is destroying history.

Those monuments are memory of the South and the Civil War, a certain set of memories.

And it's almost like whoever becomes the victor or whoever, what is in place to control the memory of an event, they're the ones who get to place the marker and it is an affront to Black memories.

What equality and citizenship mean.

So, taking down those monuments and putting other monuments in their place, this is an effort to say this is what this means to us, that, you know, we're getting tired of having these memories push forward as the memories of the event.

Announcer>...following some breaking news right now.

Workers are beginning to remove the pedestal above Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest's grave in Memphis.

Beverly> Personally, I never thought that it would happen.

And when I actually came home and I saw them taking the statue down, I'm like, Are they really doing that?

This is amazing.

♪ You really get a sense that when different groups within the Black community come together and make this decision and they're able to talk to others within the political structure of Memphis and other communities, it is a way in which you can accurately reflect the memories of the community, like the recent Ida B.

Wells statue is a testimony to the memory of Ida B.

Wells and what she meant to the City of Memphis.

♪ Justin> The movement spirit that exists in Memphis is one's that's been here for a long time Ida B.

Wells is from Memphis and started a movement against lynching.

The sanitation workers created a movement in Memphis that kick started the Environmental Justice Movement.

And you saw with the removal of statues going on around the country and here in Memphis, the movement continuing.

And that spirit is here because the injustices remain.

Tami> Those statues, to me, represented the racism and inequities that exist for Black people.

How can we tell a Black child that they matter or that their lives are important to the people around them when they've got to ride past, one of the most notorious slave traders in the South, Nathan Bedford Forrest?

Van> It was an equestrian monument that stood on a huge pedestal which overlooked not only the park, but I would say, the surrounding area.

So it really cast a huge shadow to say that this is Nathan B. Forrest, former general of the Confederacy, first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

And you're still in the South and the Confederacy shall rise again.

Tami> Not far from where we're sitting right now.

There used to stand Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederacy.

A statue of him stood in, in the middle of the "Black-est" city in Tennessee.

I launched TakeemDown901 and we met and 300 people came out And from there we built a movement.

Van> They changed the names of the parks.

So we went from Forest Park to Health Sciences Park and we went from Confederate Park to Memphis Park.

So since in that, you know, if we could change the names, we could perhaps remove the monuments.

The state legislature enacted the Tennessee Historical Preservation Act would say, you can't touch anything else.

The city knew that they had to sell the property in order for the monuments to be moved and they needed someone to accept the sale.

That sort of started the formation of Memphis Greenspace.

♪ Tami> The city of Memphis, due to the upswell of activism on the ground, worked with Memphis Greenspace, which was founded specifically to buy the parks.

And at the end of the year, that was 2017.

At the end 2017, those statues were removed.

Presenter>We want to thank the creator for allowing us to be here today... ♪ to celebrate Juneteenth.

Everybody say, Happy Juneteenth audience> Happy Juneteenth!

Van> On Juneteenth, we had a celebration at the Health Sciences Park and we had a celebration at the Memphis Park where the story once was, here's Jefferson Davis in Confederate Park, Nathan B. Forrest of Forrest Park.

You now had two wonderful Juneteenth celebrations celebrating all of the potential of where we could go as a community.

♪ soft music ♪ ♪ Justin> Our family is from Westwood.

One of my grandmothers is buried here in Boxtown, this Freedmen's Community.

We grew up financially poor and never really had a home.

So my family, my brothers and I, my parents, we moved around a lot, but our grandmother, the anchors and pillars of our family were in Westwood.

This is the place that we've always called home.

Valero Energy Corporation in Plains All-American decided that they would build a crude oil pipeline connecting oil from Oklahoma through Memphis to Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico.

While doing so, they would be going through a predominantly Black African-American neighborhood that they called the, quote, "path of least resistance" and the community rose up and showed that they're the path of resilience.

Hey!

This company decided that they were going to exploit folks misusing eminent domain.

They were going to risk over a million people's drinking water with the Memphis sand aquifer.

And we as a community decided that, that isn't what we wanted.

And so we fought.

Speaker #1> Memphis has the best water in the country and we want to protect our sand aquifers, and if they put the pipeline in our yards and crude oil lines so we'd have a leak, then that would be a disaster for our water.

This community has been overlooked for years.

We've been...facing environmental issues as well and we have companies all surrounding us.

We have to deal with environmental problems.

People have breathing issues.

People died of cancer, in our communities, sister communities as well.

So if one community is affected, all of us are affected.

Justin> Exactly, the movement is for the cause and the purposes, but it's also the people, in that there's a kinship, I think, amongst the community that we're able to use in the fight that keeps us going when we get tired.

Speaker #1> Exactly.

♪ When we're thinking about the pipeline, it is a symptom of a much deeper and much graver problem with our society.

♪ Speaker #2> Okay.

Let me look.

Justin> Environmental racism isn't just a project, it's the perpetuation of projects.

It's the perpetuation of policies.

It's the perpetuation of citing and zoning that says that there are some people's lives that are expendable.

These communities have now become the locations for corporations to exploit.

Speaker #3> We've been here all our lives, and to run a pipeline through here what if somehow... one of the pipelines burst, on your property?

That's it.

It's null and void then.

Speaker #4> They've been taken from down in this community forever... see what I'm saying?

But we pay the same amount of taxes.

that people in Germantown, up north maybe, but they don't give us no respect for the money they take from us.

We love this community like they love their community.

So why you want to kick us to the curve and say we don't have a voice and take what you want?

We got to stick together, fight for what's right, and don't let nothing stop you from doing it.

Justin> Until we grapple with the history of why Nathan Bedford Forrest or these other Confederate generals are being recognized and put on pedestals quite literally in our society, we're going to continue to have fights that at their root deal with racism.

And this fight against the pipeline is no different than those struggles.

Oil refineries disproportionately in Black communities, those too are relics of White supremacy and injustice that we haven't grappled with as a society, and so we think these things are common or natural, but they are not.

♪ And as long as we think about people as expendable, whether that's their history or their land or their water, we will not create the communities that we need.

♪ Robert> After the Civil War, Southern States entered into a period we often refer to as Presidential Reconstruction ♪ somber music ♪ ...and under Presidential Reconstruction, Southern states were left to their own devices and a lot of the old Confederate officials, even military leaders, moved into government on the state and local level.

What came as part of that were a set of laws known as Black Codes.

Some of the Black Codes addressed things like the working lives of African Americans.

If they did not have a job, if they did not have gainful employment and they were adults, they were considered vagrants.

♪ African-Americans could not own guns or knives or anything that could be used as weapons in an insurrection.

♪ African Americans could not assemble.

They could not gather in groups without White oversight.

♪ African Americans could not marry White women.

♪ When the federal government takes notice of these Black Codes they pass the Civil Rights Act, first, which abolishes the Black Codes.

Eventually they pass the 14th amendment that establishes definitively that African Americans are citizens of the United States and do enjoy the same rights as White citizens.

♪ When the Black Codes are abolished by federal legislation in the 1860s, they don't quickly re-emerge in a different form.

They slowly evolve into what we know as the Jim Crow laws, little by little.

♪ Every Jim Crow law has its origins in the Black Codes, whether it's abolishing the right of African Americans and Whites to sit together in public accommodations, ♪ the right to vote even.

♪ And African Americans could be easily caught up in the criminal justice system, be charged with a felony and then their right to vote would be restricted probably for the rest of their lives.

And this is a legacy that continues not only from the 1860s but even in the present day.

♪ (door screeches) (door slams) ♪ Davion> This right here is the neighborhood that I'm from.

It's an all Black community, or once was all Black, an all Black community.

And I sold drugs for a very long time.

And, and I used to flood the neighborhood with, you know, Christmas giveaways, turkey giveaways, you know, just all these different giveaways, but I was kind of doing it the wrong, wrong way.

And I asked, God, if you allow me to do this thing again, I'm going to sling blocks a different way.

♪ And these are the real blocks.

This is what the kids in the neighborhood need to see.

They don't need to see the other block.

We need people coming back to revitalize and rebuild our community with the right kind of blocks.

I went to prison and I did 30.5 months in the Department of Correction.

Ex-felon just seems something that's doomed.

It's like a cloud when you see ex-felon.

But when you say returning citizens it's like sunlight.

It's daytime.

It's a different feeling.

You know, it's different energy.

By being called a returning citizen, Okay.

Yeah.

I'm returning from...a world that, you know, nobody want to be in, right- back to being a citizen.

Employee> I brought all that.

Davion> Okay I brought one too Employee> I got you.

Davion> Tell me when you get it all over with Davion> I don't say prison was a bad thing for me.

I want to say prison was a bad thing with good results, because while I was there, I was able to write a whole business plan, you know, build in my mind different things that I wanted to build when I got out.

Hey, "Old Town".

You got one second, please?

My father ended up opening a door for me.

He went down and he signed his name on a riding lawnmower for me.

He gave me a truck.

He bought me a trailer.

Have you seen what I was talking about out there?

That was the start.

(silence) (sighs) I went to work... (silence) ...cutting yards.

While, I'm.

cutting yards, it was hard.

It was hard trying to cut yards and make money.

Then I began to get electrical jobs.

So with the mix, it was good.

(traffic sounds) The next phase of what I wrote down, all this stuff was created from...from wanting to open up a convenience store that came to the horizon.

That came to fruition.

I was able to put my mom's vision, my mom's dream that I was able to connect, to put her into place and call that Annie D's Food Mart.

Employee> The idea would have never came, if it wasn't for this lady right here.

Her name is Annie.

She's a wonderful, phenomenal lady, been with the school business for 34 years.

She's just recently retired.

>> DeDe has always been a driver, a go getter.

He had a hiccup.

And that hiccup did not define him.

He had the support of his family.

He had his brothers.

He had the whole village standing behind him.

♪ We supported him and we ensured him that that is not the end of the world, you know.

When you get out, we're going to help you.

We're going to help you get on your feet.

♪ Davion> You know, in all these different things that I wrote down, including the barbecue stand that we just opened up, I wanted to call it Double D's B-Q.

But, you know, it's not all about me.

It always was about other people.

And that's what I'm all about, building a community.

So that's why the name of my company is H&B Community Builders.

The "H" it stands for my last name.

It's Hampton.

That's...me and my brothers.

In fact, my family.

I brought them under this umbrella and this B, there's another counterpart, a family that don't look like me, a dad and a son, named David Barr and Travis Barr.

We was able to do some different businesses on different things.

And I, and I gave them my vision on how I want to build a community.

>> Davion was an electrical subcontractor for my son's business in Orlando.

They became friends, and Davion pulled him aside one day and said we should do some other stuff together.

And the first year we might have built three or four houses together.

The next year we doubled what we were doing and the next year we doubled what we were doing again.

(distant phone conversation) Davion> I knew I wanted to be a homebuilder.

And so, you know, I'm building homes throughout the community.

I mean, like not just a home.

I'm building nice homes, affordable homes that people can come back to the community and live in.

Kenneth> My wife was friends with Davion's brother, and that's how I met Davion.

I couldn't ask for anybody better to work for.

I mean, I couldn't dream of even changing my job.

Yeah, it's people like him that actually give other people that are convicted felons an outlook to look at.

"Well, hey, if he did it, I can do it."

Davion> I started my march with Desmond Meade and in the "Florida Restoration Rights Coalition".

We getting ready to go to Advocacy Day next week.

Next Thursday, I believe, we're going up to Tallahassee.

I speak on all different types of platforms and different things, talking about return of citizens and the right to vote.

In spite of, to this day, Davion Hampton still don't have the right to vote.

♪ >> So, my name is Marquis McKenzie and I am the statewide community liaison manager for Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.

And if you want to see any change in a community it's by voting.

And when you think about all the things when somebody get in trouble why is voting, the first thing that they take away from them?

Because it's powerful.

So it's a powerful tool that... we must exercise and if you ask me, that's a right that I don't think nobody should ever lose.

♪ What Ammendment 4 is, it was an amendment that we was able to get passed.

It can help returning citizens regain their voting rights.

♪ For 150 years in the state of Florida, individuals were banned from voting.

Right.

If You get a felony conviction, you lost your rights for life.

It wasn't only five or six or seven years.

This was life.

And one of these things that we seen as an organization when you uplift the ones that at very bottom, it creates safer communities for all of us.

♪ It was a loophole in that world, we was able to go in and some of those fines, the fees, we can get them modified or you can get it reduced or waived to community service hours.

♪ So of course, we went on with that fight.

We continued to push and just recently we was able to raise almost $24 million where we paid about 40,000 fines and fees for individuals across the state.

And we continue to fight and push efforts with our fines and fees program to make sure that all the 1.4 million returning citizens have the opportunity to be a part of democracy.

Davion> I had what they call an automatic fee just for the charge that I had of $52,500.

Not being selfish, and it's not about me.

Hey, instead of paying these $52,500 for me, which is one vote, go pay something for other people, which can be many, many, many votes.

I feel as if this is something that shouldn't have never been done anyway.

Poll taxes is what I call it.

You know, this is something that I will continue to fight to the death of me.

We're not far removed from slavery.

That's why I stand toe and toe and hand in hand with Florida Restoration Rights Coalition, because we're going to continue to fight the fight as long as the fight needs to be followed.

I want to make it to where I don't have to pay a dime for something that I already deserve.

That's my right from day one.

♪ Cassandra> One of the things that President Abraham Lincoln knew before the end of the Civil War was that in order for the nation to move forward, since the war was about slavery, whether to maintain it, expand it, or to end it, that he had to end it, and he had to end it through a constitutional amendment, because the US Constitution allowed for slavery to exist.

And so he began to lobby and push for the passage of the 13th Amendment.

And one of the requirements for every state that had seceded was that in order for them to be readmitted they had to approve the 13th Amendment.

♪ They had to actually rewrite their constitution and set up the law so that it could be passed and they would accept the 13th Amendment.

In order to do that, one of the Reconstruction Acts required all of the male citizens who were eligible to vote, be allowed to cast their vote and potentially serve in this important Constitutional Convention.

The next step was to initiate an amendment to the Constitution.

That was the 14th Amendment that would restore citizenship rights to African Americans.

♪ Simply saying that they were not only human beings, but they were citizens of this country and establishing the idea that we take for granted and that is that if you were born in this country, you are automatically a citizen of this country.

And so eventually the 15th Amendment would be passed, ♪ That would complete the efforts that were part of the United States government's push to not only end slavery, but to end this cycle of racism that was created by the institution and all the laws passed to support that institution.

And it was only during the Reconstruction Period that the federal government for the first time began to try to protect and enforce the civil rights and liberties of people because there was such an effort to destroy that and the states were actually guilty of doing that.

♪ ♪ brassy music ♪ Student> Yeah, we're Gen Z.

We're the youth.

We're young, but in a few more years we're going to be adults.

We're going to be in the congressional buildings.

We're going to be in these district offices.

We're going to be making the rules.

♪ Cassandra> You have to fight for equity.

It is not a given.

♪ Reconstruction was doomed to not to succeed.

We were supposed to reverse 246 years of American history.

Who does that?

If you do not have a political voice, you have no political power.

♪ >> So I'm not sure why we're still talking about voting rights, why we're still talking about voting suppression.

>> I believe gerrymandering and voter suppression, that's stuff's done because they can.

There's not enough pushback.

Jordan Barnes> The in line wait can affect a person's decision to vote that day or in another day.

Or they may feel like that's the bad experience.

That's going to be their everyday reality.

Cassandra> My parents and grandparents knew what it was like to fight to vote.

So at the age of 18, (laughs) exactly at 18, on our birthdays, we had to register to vote.

There was no ifs, ands or buts about it.

Soji> Voting is the heart of the democratic process.

You are the stakeholders Jordan> We acknowledge that this is a problem.

This is what we need to fix.

This is what we have to fix it.

Simone> You have a choice to help make a change.

That's exciting to me.

My vote when I go to that ballot box is going to help decide who runs this nation.

Soji> This democracy is not just an American democracy because the rest of the world is watching.

♪ upbeat music ♪ If you don't vote, we're going to be stuck forever in the 19th century and history will keep on repeating itself.

I'm not sure that's what we want.

♪ upbeat music ♪ ♪ (chiming) Narrator> In December 1865, President Andrew Johnson decided that Georgia and other former Confederate states could rejoin the government and declared that the Union had been restored.

But Johnson's version of Reconstruction in many ways continued a tradition of White supremacy in the South.

In 1866, Republicans swept the elections in both houses, defying Johnson, ending presidential reconstruction and beginning the era known as Radical Reconstruction.

In March 1867, Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act, dividing the South into military districts.

Congress directed the Army to register Black and White men as voters to hold an election for delegates to a new Constitutional Convention.

♪ In Georgia, 169 delegates, 37 of whom were Black, were elected.

By March of 1868, they had written a new state constitution.

Across the south, the new Reconstruction constitutions, credit long awaited rights and freedoms to African-Americans.

(chiming) ♪ upbeat music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ music fades ♪ ♪ soft music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Narrator> This program was funded with the support of Suzanne Thorpe and John Baynes.

♪ The ETV Endowment.

Of South Carolina and The National Endowment for the Humanities.

♪ ♪