Original subtitles

Previously on America Divided. They're buying a $90 million apartment.

They're looking at it as a safety deposit box.

900 to 2100 in one lead. He's at Palm Heights in New Manhattan.

There's dust, there's debris.

Those are the tactics they use to displace you. He is displacing those

who happen to be black.

And breaking the law so thoroughly.

Residents started congregating in your house.

Rashes, hair falling out. We have completely different kids.

They went from straight -A students to failing.

Rusted, corroded pipes.

Basically, this is crime scene evidence.

Crime one, destruction of our infrastructure.

Crime two, poisoning people.

What's that vocabulary word?

Persistent. Let's clap it out. Ready?

Persistent.

Persistent. I still remember my own second grade classroom.

It's amazing how many of us do.

School is where we learn how to read, how to think, and how to argue.

What do we need to know?

It's the stage where the small dramas in life come to define our lives.

Our first friendships, first fights, first crushes.

It's where we learn how to learn.

What is the purpose of underlining and jotting notes?

Why do we do those things?

I shared my own second grade classroom and my teacher with the third grade.

Sixty students in total and two lesson plans crammed into one tiny space.

It wasn't until we moved that I realized that this wasn't how it was supposed to

be and that being born into the wrong school district can change your life

forever.

And that's why I've come here, to St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida,

where something has gone terribly wrong with the education system.

It's a system that effectively sweeps millions of poor people into second

status. Did we invest in those communities?

No, instead we declared war.

What we have today is a wealth gap that is huge.

We are dying with money. We are dying with money. The working class have been

hammered. These are human beings. These are people.

What can we do to get that point across?

The continent telling us that we're not doing enough is causing us to lose.

It is not a matter of opinion anymore.

It is clearly exposed.

What do we do? They can only win by

dividing America.

We know that the way things are working are working at all. That's right.

If you just keep pushing, if you just keep trying.

If you refuse to let the nightmares have the last say, eventually the dawn will

break, the sun will come out, and you will be in a brand new day.

If there's no struggle, there can be no progress.

So we just got another delivery today.

Everybody's trying to come together.

Millionaire Monopoly is devastating what they're doing to our community because

we all deserve to have access to safe water.

Period.

As I dig back into the history of Flint, I learn things that today are hard to

believe. In the city of Flint, Michigan, all is excitement.

All this is a day. Back in the 1970s, Flint had the highest per capita income

in the United States.

It was a General Motors company town back when what was good for GM was good

America.

But GM apparently only cared about saving money. They moved the jobs to

countries where they could pay lower wages and shut down their big factories.

Flint collapsed.

This place used to be Buick City, a factory that employed 27 ,000

people.

Now there's nothing left.

I find it almost incomprehensible that the water crisis would be visited on a

place that was already so devastated.

I need someone who's not a Flint resident, someone with some distance, to

explain how this could happen.

People are recommending I track down a Michigan State professor named Josh

Sapochny.

His area of research is how states treat cities like Flint when they run out of

money.

In Michigan, the state assigns emergency managers.

Hi. I'm Josh.

Sorry. Nice to meet you.

I have a lot of questions for you.

Sounds good.

I'm ready.

So I've heard that the Flint water crisis was made worse.

by the fact that the city was governed by emergency managers. Can you explain,

does Flint have a water crisis because of emergency managers?

The failure of the state in the Flint water crisis was that it designed an

approach that empowers one individual who effectively displaces the local

elected officials, right? So in 30 days following the switch, there were people

in the streets with bottles of water showing...

The discoloration. The people in the city of Flint are raising this issue.

To their elected officials who don't have power to do really anything about

That's right.

I'm just in shock at how democracy was just completely thrown out the window.

seems like the whole point of emergency managers is to not just override elected

officials, but basically that means to override democracy.

It's an accounting solution, right? It's an accounting policy.

When it was clear that there was a problem with the drinking water in the

of Flint, the emergency manager's job at that moment was to turn a blind eye.

The job of Flint's four successive emergency managers, Dr. Sopoczny says,

cut costs at all costs.

They slashed funding to senior centers, gutted the police and fire departments,

and even auctioned off Santa.

The starting bid was $5.

That's, you know, this is sort of the powers of the emergency manager. They're

coming in and say, these things have to be cut and go because my job is to

reduce the deficit. Reduce the deficit, yeah.

Was the city being mismanaged? Was it necessary to bring an emergency manager?

I think it was necessary for the state to get involved in some way.

It was a one -industry town, effectively, and that industry left.

But Michigan's policy essentially assumes that the revenue structure in

is fine.

We're going to come in and we're going to make a bunch of major cuts. But

there's no additional help on the revenue side.

They're strapped as it is. They're having issues around revenue and needing

money to do things.

And then the answer is to cut even more of their programs and give them even

less money to work with. So there's a death spiral.

Dr. Sipoczny says that the debt spiral is the product of the austerity programs

of several Michigan governors, the most drastic being that of the current

governor, Rick Snyder.

The relationship between the state government in Michigan and its city

government is not a very good relationship. In fact, in certain issue

it's a toxic relationship.

I'm an accountant and your governor.

I've found I can help more people when the numbers add up. We didn't change

the times, and we let politics get in the way.

Not anymore.

We're on the road to recovery for every Michigan.

The credit never goes to the person who built a strong foundation.

But that's what you have to do first.

And that's why we have accounts.

So is Governor Rick Snyder ultimately responsible for what happened?

So, Mr. Jefferson, if you want the loan, you'll just have to locate your store

in a more respectable neighborhood.

Oh, you mean like a white neighborhood?

That's a thought.

Back in the 70s, our shows reflected what I felt was a national consensus

race relations needed to be discussed.

Boy is a white racist word.

And solved.

Whereas we got our fair share of colors in this street.

What? That's a petition.

It ain't a petition.

It's a letter for the people who live in this street.

To who?

To some people that we don't want living in this street. What do you want to

start this thing up for again?

Oh, Daddy, isn't it a little late? The Jeffersons have been living here for

two years. This letter ain't got nothing to do with the Jeffersons. The

Jeffersons are different. Why are the Jeffersons different?

Because one college family is a novelty and two is a ghetto.

These days, as I meet people living on the edge, I can't help but notice

that just about all of them are people of color.

Why is so little changed in America?

Is skin color still destiny?

I've come to see someone who spent years studying this question.

I really first got interested in segregation as a young child when I

getting bused from a black neighborhood in Waterloo, Iowa, to go to white

schools across the other side of town.

It became very clear to me that people were living in very different types of

neighborhoods, and often that corresponded with their race.

But when people have the chance to live in integrated neighborhoods, people do

see that we're all pretty much the same and we all pretty much want the same

things. The problem is, in this country, it's so rare that we get that

opportunity, and especially in cities like New York.

When I think about segregation, it's in the South.

Believe it or not, when it comes to housing segregation, the North is worse

the South.

New York City is actually the third most segregated city in the country.

All of the most segregated cities in the country are in the north. New York City

is the third most segregated city in the country.

In the 1930s, we had the Great Depression, and the federal government

that it's going to build the middle class by insuring federal loans for

It took a map of a city, and the government decided that neighborhoods

white... got the best ratings. And neighborhoods that were integrated or

got a lesser rating.

Neighborhoods that were black got the worst rating.

And those neighborhoods were literally outlined in red marker, redlining.

For the first 30 years, black Americans were almost entirely excluded.

98 % of those loans went to white Americans.

But we saw the largest expansion of...

the white middle class in the history of our country. And all of that wealth

mostly was coming from housing.

And so what we have today is a wealth gap that is huge.

The average or median wealth of a white family is $140 ,000, and the median

wealth of a black family is $7 ,000.

$140 ,000. To $7 ,000.

If I'm a young white kid and I'm going to college, I don't have to take out a

student loan because my parents have wealth in their house that they can take

out to help me get through college.

If I'm a young black kid, more likely I'm going to have to take out a loan to

to college. And in fact, we know black Americans are the most likely to take

loans and also take out the largest loan amount, even though they have the least

wealth to pay it back.

Then I'm the white kid and I graduate and I go into teaching and maybe I'm

making $35 ,000 a year, but my parents can give me a down payment to buy into a

good neighborhood.

The black kid's going to have to make it on his own. Same income, but isn't

going to be able to buy into that good neighborhood.

You just either pass on your privilege or your disadvantage to the next

generation.

It must be so hard for Americans listening to this to believe their

could behave that way.

I'd say it's hard for white Americans. I think for black Americans, it's very

easy to believe that our government behaves this way.

And then you have this myth that if a lot of black people move into a

neighborhood, the property values go down.

That's actually true.

It's true, though, because of the way the federal government rated integrated

neighborhoods. But we've come to believe it's true because black people just

don't keep up their properties. So you see the way that a reality can be fueled

by a myth.

Reality can be fueled by a myth.

Yes, absolutely.

And is our government doing anything about that?

Well.

We have fair housing laws now. We don't have fair housing yet.

I don't think we realize how much effort went into creating segregation.

We had cooperation from individual homeowners all the way up to the federal

government to reorder our society in a way that harmed black Americans and

helped white Americans.

So you have to break it up. You have to do what you did to create it.

To end segregation, you have to break it up.

I agree.

But how can you fight something that's so widespread and so subtle?

St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida.

It looks like a prosperous vacation town, its harbors filled with yachts and

backyards dotted with pools.

But in a small cluster of five schools on the poorer south side, Test scores

have collapsed.

Students can't read at grade level and they're failing in math and English.

I'm meeting civil rights attorney Amir Whitaker. I'm hoping that Amir can help

me find out exactly what is happening here and why.

What makes Pinellas so unique? We talk about how it sits in the state

nationally, but let's kind of...

Break down a little bit of that. What have you found that makes it so

particularly egregious? The Florida Department of Education looked at the

achievement elementary schools, and they found at the bottom of that list, or I

guess the top, right?

If you look at the 15.

Pinellas has five in there, number one, number two, and then a couple more.

Five of the worst 15 performing schools. In the state and probably in the

country, right? And they're all clustered into this area that was

through housing discrimination and other policies where most African Americans

are in the county.

Five out of the top 15, which is incredible.

Right. Side by side. There's a dual education system here in Pinellas. If

black, it looks a certain way. If you're white, it looks a certain way.

Amir tells me that the majority white schools on the north side are

outperforming the state averages.

But here, on the south side, in the five worst schools, 95 % of black students

are failing reading or math.

Amir has analyzed the data, but we're canvassing the community to try to

understand what's behind those disturbing numbers.

Most of the teachers, I don't know, they try to teach the students, but some of

them just fall back and let the kids go, just passing it on.

And nobody paying their attention, so I think they need to work on paying the

kids' attention.

A pattern of stories quickly emerges.

High teacher turnover, failing test scores, school staff stretched too thin.

Morning.

Can we talk to you all for a second?

My name is Amir. I'm a civil rights lawyer looking into things happening in

schools here.

I'm Jesse Williams.

How you doing? We're looking into the school system here. We'd love to just

some stories about what's going on and talk to you all, too, and hear about how

you like school and what's happening.

I want them to change schools.

I want them to go to Bay Point next year. I do not want them going to

That is one of the worst schools.

They all went to school since they was one years old. Every single one of them

went to school. She was a straight -A kid her whole life.

Now all of a sudden she fell in math. She was the smartest kid you ever seen.

Now she having a problem with math. I just don't understand it. I just think

that school ain't teaching her. Well, everybody struggles a little bit here

there. I know, but giving her to her full attention.

Sunshine and Andre Walker's family just moved near Lakewood Elementary, one of

the five failing schools.

They echo themes we've heard all along the campus.

Two of their children, who thrived at their last school, were even held back a

grade.

Do you feel connected to your teachers?

Sometimes.

I don't have like five different teachers this year.

He just started like Tuesday, my new one. Getting close to the end of the

year and you're still getting new teachers coming in.

You too, huh?

And he has bonding issues like a little bit of anxiety when he first meets a new

teacher.

It hurts my heart to hear parents say that. You know, we're talking about

schools that are now F and failing schools that were A schools, that were B

schools. And now, if there's no school you can just go to, that's not a D or an

F school on the South Side.

name and number along with a detailed message and we will return your call as

soon as possible. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Rosario Dawson. I'm here in Flint, Michigan conducting interviews

about the water crisis here and I would love to be able to speak to Governor

Snyder the sooner you can get back to me the sooner we can put this interview on

the book.

Thank you so much.

No one in charge will agree to an interview.

Some people are being prosecuted, so everybody's lawyered up.

The closest I'm getting to speaking truth to power is a phone call I've

with a lawyer for former emergency manager Darnell Early.

In preparing for the call, I come across something insane.

By law, emergency managers enjoy immunity from prosecution unless

negligence can be established.

When it was discovered that there was a problem with the water and Detroit said

that they would switch back at no additional charge, why then did Darnell

say no?

Darnell Early, when he first got in October of 2013 or thereabouts, the

to terminate the contract with the Detroit water system had been made

And because of the money that had been invested.

He turned it down because they could not afford a long -term deal, even if some

of the costs were going to be absorbed by Detroit.

I'm just curious, at what point is an emergency manager's actions going to

to the level of prosecution?

Like, what responsibility or accountability can be expected?

He has said that he is accountable based on a leadership standpoint, and that he

wished he had done more, could do more. He's even apologized to the public in a

very public way.

But that's because he should be blamed for what was a water treatment process

failure by the experts who he relied on.

So overseeing the poisoning of a city isn't criminal negligence?

I'm not crazy about the way you cast that.

Political appointees, emergency managers.

Public officials, they should not be prosecuted for detrimental reliance on

those who have greater expertise than they do.

Absolutely not.

If you're an emergency manager, your duties and responsibilities are to right

the financial shift.

When you ask about an apartment, you're looking for a one -bedroom. So if he

offers a studio, that's too small.

If he offers a bigger size unit, it's probably going to be too expensive. So

you're sticking with a one bedroom.

So when is an apartment available? Price range?

New apartment.

Make $41 ,000 a year. My wife, Suzanne, makes $29 ,000.

I've been at my job for four years. She's been at job for six.

Remember my phone number?

Yes, remember your phone number.

It's not unlike many others who have not in the past.

My name is Roger White.

Roger Sean.

Oh, the white means I'm white.

So my name is Roger Sean. My wife's name is Mona.

She works at Cavalry Hospital, and we're looking for $1 ,300 to $1 ,500 one

bedroom.

We're doing that because my wife would love to be a little closer to where she

works.

She's now 30 years old.

Fred Freiberg's group is an investigative outfit that hires actors

they're searching for apartments.

Today, that's what I'm doing.

I'll be carrying a hidden camera to find out whether a landlord racially

discriminates. Will the landlord tell one thing to me?

and another to LB.

If the landlord treats us differently, Fred Center intends to sue him.

We did test a number of buildings in the neighborhood you're going to and found

this one was, in fact, discriminating based on race.

Your organization has been in business for 11 years, and you've sued often, I

understand. We do sue often. When we find discrimination, we have not lost a

case.

But why are you, I mean, you're exceedingly white.

Yes, but I realize the harm that comes to everybody, including white people in

the society and living in a segregated society.

I know I was greatly impaired growing up in a segregated white neighborhood,

going to segregated white schools, not having contact with people of other

and cultures, impaired my ability to function now in a more multiracial

It's L .B. Williams tagging in as Lawrence Williams.

So that is recorded.

The camera? Yeah, this is the camera. The camera's right there. So when it

in your pocket, it's perfect.

We tend to think of education as a personal problem.

It could be bad luck with a teacher this year, or kids going through a phase.

But here, in Pinellas County, Florida, the schools have become a collective

problem affecting an entire community.

So why?

Why is this happening here?

I taught high school in Philadelphia, where our school system always seemed to

be on the verge of bankruptcy.

But St. Petersburg isn't a poor city. In fact, it has one of the highest per

capita income levels in all of Florida.

But beneath the surface, this sunny tourist town has a darker side.

A history of housing discrimination packed much of the county's black

into south St. Petersburg.

And when school busing began in 1971, whites rioted against desegregation.

Riots erupted again in 1996.

after the police killed an unarmed black man, Tyrone Lewis.

But throughout the 80s and 90s, the schools in South St. Petersburg seemed

doing fine.

It wasn't until 2007 that the bottom began to fall out.

In the news coverage from that year, one school board member's name appears

again and again, sounding the alarm.

Mary Brown.

Each year, of course, you look at the budget and see where you can cut costs.

Right. The school board felt, well, we have a budget cut that we have to make,

and we've got to cut out busing some children.

So we were talking about a vote on whether we end busing. The vote was that

would go back to neighborhood schools.

And now you called it neighborhood schools.

They're segregated schools.

They're segregated schools.

Yeah, that's the bottom line.

They're segregated schools.

The parents thought that they would get everything they needed.

Some of the people of the black community thought, oh, the money has to

with the children.

Yeah. And the money should go with the children. Yeah.

But the money didn't quite go with the children.

Why do you think the money never came, never went to where it was promised to

go? Because it went to other schools where they felt the need was greater.

Why might they think their need is greater? What are some differences

South County and those other schools?

North County has more white children. South County has more minority children.

Okay. And therefore, you can take

that and think of it in any way you want to.

Funds didn't come like they were supposed to come.

Right. I just see a whole decade of children.

Get up. Let's go.

Time to go to school.

I told y 'all two times to go to school.

In 2007, the Pinellas School Board didn't say they were voting for

But how could they not know?

For all of its spring break parties and Yankee retirees, this is the Jim Crow

South.

I remember my own father's stories about his school in Valdosta, Georgia.

After a wave of protests across the South, the Supreme Court had ruled in

v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

And in most of America,

desegregation meant busing.

In Valdosta, the white kids spat on my dad and his black classmates, and in

cities across America, whites rioted against busing.

But American schools became more integrated, and the achievement gap

white and black students narrowed to its lowest margin ever.

But a recent series of court rulings has begun to weaken Brown v. Board.

And so, Every morning, Sunshine and Andre dress and feed their kids.

They check their homework and make sure that their walk is safe, before handing

them over to a school that is failing them in every measurable way.

Sunshine and Andre's children, and an entire generation of their classmates,

growing up in what are essentially the same separate and unequal schools that

the Supreme Court outlawed 60 years ago.

Councilman Eric Mays and his constituents continue the fight to tell

what's been happening here.

And today, there's a victory on that front.

It's been more than two years since the water was switched, and five months

since President Obama declared a state of emergency.

Still, despite the waves, a presidential visit means the country is paying

attention to what's happening here.

And to the Flintstones, that's a pretty big deal.

apparently with the governor.

That's me.

The American people are paying attention and they care about you.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that this should not have happened in the first place.

This was a man -made disaster.

This was avoidable. This was preventable.

An emergency manager was put in place whose mandate was primarily to

cut at all costs.

Listening to the president, it feels like he's summarizing the lessons I've

learned in Flint.

It feels like after all they've been through and all they've done to help

other, their voices have finally been heard.

Can I get some water?

The president's visit did not make the water safe.

Even though Flint switched back to the Detroit system months ago, the water is

still flowing through corroded pipes.

To truly fix the problem, much of Flint's water infrastructure needs to be

overhauled. And that will take a lot of money.

And possibly many years.

Fair Housing Justice Center is a nonprofit civil rights organization

in New York City.

What we did this past week here in New York is we tested in a predominantly

white neighborhood and sent L .B. Williams and Norman Lear.

And we actually have an audio and video account of what occurred during these

visits. So this is L .B.'s recording.

Hi. Hi.

Are you the landlord?

Yes, sir.

My wife and I are looking for a one -bedroom apartment.

Last month, I rented one.

Two months ago, I rented two.

Okay. At the moment, I have no vacancies here.

Okay, no vacancies?

No, at the moment.

Okay. When do you think you have one that will be available? One bedroom, I

don't expect.

Two bedrooms, I don't expect.

Maybe a studio a little next month. Okay.

He clearly said there was no one bedroom available.

Clearly, he said it several times.

So this was basically Tuesday night and then Wednesday morning, you visited the

same landlord.

Hey, how you doing?

Hey, my wife was out here the other day.

I guess you saw that sign. Yeah.

We were looking for a one -bedroom apartment.

I'm going to have a studio here, and I have one bedroom in Pelham Bay.

Uh -huh.

I think I know where that is.

In the studio here.

Studio, I'm going to have end of the month here.

Uh -huh.

Terrific. I thank you very much, sir.

You.

got told about a studio apartment in that building that was coming available.

A one -bedroom apartment was available, which he's willing to show me, and a

studio. Yeah, and the one bedroom, according to the recording, is in Pelham

on Wellman Avenue, another predominantly white neighborhood. Last night, the way

LB was treated, was that a surprise to you? No, it was not, because we had

previously investigated this building and done multiple.

African -American white tests at this building. And the exact conduct that we

observed on your test, we observed three additional previous times. The way this

housing provider does business is to discriminate against African -Americans.

Now, it's not against the law. It is. So why hasn't something been done about

it? Well, I think part of it goes to this issue of the type of discrimination

is. If LB had been a bona fide apartment seeker.

he would have had no idea that the agent was lying to him about availabilities.

So you'd have no inclination to file a housing discrimination complaint.

So everything we're talking about, how pervasive is this?

I think it still accounts for much of the segregation that we see in our

metropolitan region. It's one of the prominent factors, I think, in why we

move more quickly toward a more integrated society.

I think people of color carry...

additional baggage, through no fault of our own, that other people, that

white people don't worry about, essentially.

There's this issue that you always have to be aware of, that someone is going to

look at you differently, not for what you are, essentially, but for what you

look like.

It always saddens me, but consistently says to me, as an African American,

That I'm less than.

And that's a horrible feeling to feel.

You deserve a lot of credit for doing this.

I feel like I have to.

You know, it's my way of making a difference.

I think hopefully shining a light on the problem.

in this forum, by bringing the lawsuits that we subsequently will, in response

to these situations, will show the government that it is possible to

this discriminatory conduct, but you've got to devote the enforcement resources

to do it.

Back in 2007, The Pinellas School Board promised that newly resegregated schools

in South County would get the resources that they needed.

But Mary Brown told me the funding never came.

The federal Title I program provides additional funding for schools with high

concentrations of low -income students.

All five of the county's worst schools receive Title I support.

I called the local Title I office, but they blew me off. So I'm dropping by in

person to look at their public records.

Hi, how are you?

I'm with Jesse Williams.

I don't have that information right now.

Not right now. We don't have anyone here that can help you with that. Do you

want to come back or make an appointment?

Who are you?

I'm shooting a Norman Lear documentary, America Divided. I'm Jesse Williams.

Is there a reason for the hostility?

What's the problem with that?

The Title I office called the police on me instead of talking, and it's hard for

anyone here to get answers from the school system.

So families like the Tuckers must drive across Pinellas to attend the monthly

school board meetings in North County.

They join Ashley Green and the Dream Defenders for the protest outside.

Our children deserve wins!

Win! Win! Win!

Win! Win! Win!

All right, let's do this!

Inside, they are each given three minutes to speak to the people

their children's future.

You can argue about the money. You can argue about the resources.

But if we're truly talking about equity and equity for black kids, the black

students here, they need more resources.

My son's education is important just like anybody's kid's important, black,

white, Asian, anything. These children, my children, the children that attend

these schools are not failures. They're not dumb.

They need more help. I challenge you from the position that you stand to

actually serve the students whom you are entrusted.

The constant excuses, the constant telling us that we're not doing enough

causing us to explode.

I want to invite you all out to a community barbecue that we're going to

having on March 19th.

We have to limit to three minutes. Thank you, though.

So we will do our board meeting evaluation and be in adjournment.

The Title I office still won't talk to us, but I managed to track down copies

the state audits.

And it's immediately clear that Mary Brown is right.

The state auditors repeatedly cite Pinellas County for staffing the schools

unqualified teachers and for misallocation of funds.

So I dig a little deeper and find that in spite of all their promises to the

contrary, funding after segregation was erratic at best.

Some years, the failing schools received less money from the county than other

schools in the district.

Though the superintendent refuses to talk to me, I set up a meeting with a

school board member who voted to end busing and presided over the

of Pinellas schools.

Linda Lerner.

We spoke yesterday. I stopped by. I was looking for an apartment, that one

-bedroom apartment.

My wife had seen the sign.

Can we make a date to look at that? We're interested.

The time has come to confront the landlord who discriminated against OB,

him no one -bedroom apartments were available.

I will see you at 9 .30 at 2854.

Thank you.

I must say I'm good at this.

I spent

my

career creating characters whose lives would shine a light on our divided

society.

The point was to move beyond the divisions.

But being a part of this experiment has shown me that racism still stands.

our country, through subtle words and gestures that shut people of color out

neighborhoods and out of opportunity.

The landlord's actions placed me on one side of the divide and L .B. on the

other. Now I want to see how he will answer for himself.

With a hidden camera and a producer posing as my daughter, we continue the

charade as he shows us an apartment in the building.

Two windows.

Do you remember that face?

Because he came looking for an apartment just the other day. And you told him

that the one bedroom of the studio was available.

I didn't have no one bedroom.

We have one at Wellman Avenue, but we were supposed to be there.

I'm sorry to cost you this way, but there were no blacks in the building,

we're not going to rent to blacks in the building.

Come with me.

Come with me.

I

don't

want the camera here.

though it says he'll take us to meet some of his black tenants.

But after we enter the building, he changes his mind and says he doesn't

disturb them.

He lied, I believe.

And he represents a good deal of America.

And I'm...

I'm not sad because they're bad guys. I'm sad because we don't have a culture

that discusses us with them, with the so -called good guys.

You know, we're all going to have to know about it, think about it, talk

it before we ever get past it.

I feel sadder for having done it because this is our America and it

isn't what we promised.

So in 2007, there was a vote cast that seriously impacted predominantly black

population and a generation of that population that has been pushed into the

most underserved and underperforming schools in the nation. One of the really

unique things that you provide to this narrative is that you were there.

Is that something, looking back on it, that you regret?

No, I don't regret the vote. Our goal was not to segregate the schools.

Our goal was to attract diversity.

It wasn't like there was no plan. So that's what I want to get into. So you

at the hearing that we're going to be held accountable by our constituents,

community, to follow through. And that may mean taking some resources from

schools. And that's not easy.

I believe we understood that when we put that commitment to place. This is

attributed to you. So the part of the deal was we're going to segregate the

schools. But we're going to add resources to supplement that. We may

resources for a very high poverty area.

They did have extra money as Title I schools.

They actually did have, I can't tell you the amount, lots of extra money. But,

you know, we're looking through the numbers.

And in 2008, an audit, which is really the first full year after this decision

was made, was showing that the funds were misallocated. I won't even get into

that. I can send you to their head of finance.

That is completely false.

But that 2008 audit, that's where I'm getting that information from the

highlighted sections in particular.

That's what's saying very specifically that the funds were misallocated.

Absolutely not true.

Starting in 2013, 2014, we started putting extra money in those five

What strikes me is that what we're talking about is 2013, 14, but the

was made in 2007, 8. We have other schools that have high numbers of

students. So why are these five schools getting it? Because there was the

recognition.

That these were the schools that were most in need of those resources.

And when did they become in need of those resources?

When did they become in need of those resources? Yes, you identified a need.

I'm wondering how do you measure that need and when did you find out they had

need? I'm just saying before we gave some extra resources, we had

But when we really looked at the data and what was happening, recognized...

Pardon? Is this 2014?

I think it'll be four years and next July. Next July. I won't accept that we

were doing nothing. That's not true. Were we doing enough?

No. And another big part of it, as you know, having been a teacher, and you

understand all of this, it's attracting and retaining the most highly qualified

teachers who really want to be here.

The 2012 state audit said that 171 teachers were not.

were not qualified and they needed to be qualified, and they were receiving

those federal funds. I've admitted that we did things but could have done more.

You keep going back to it. Because that kid gets one chance.

He gets one chance.

You keep wanting me to say how terrible I was with the vote, how bad I was to

vote for that, how I was going to make schools that were underperforming. I

won't agree to that.

It seems like the whole school system here is in denial.

But momentum is growing behind a cluster of community groups that are demanding

change.

The Dream Descenders have convened a meeting in a local park.

And some parents, like Sunshine and Andre, are joining them for the very

time.

Sunshine

and

Andre had been looking for a way to get their children out of Lakewood.

But now they want to stay and join the growing movement for change.

They're organizing to transform their schools collectively rather than escape

them individually.

Dream Defenders Barbecue, where you have this kind of intersection of

organizers, activists, and parents, and students. How does that feel?

I love to see people coming together for a good cause like this, man.

The only thing I wish it was more people. I wish this whole part was

people and parents.

To have kids and trying to get the word out.

To me, I think we're going to join whatever we got to join so we can help.

It was the fight for school desegregation that launched the civil

movement. And it didn't begin with a courtroom argument.

It began with black students and their parents organizing across the South.

The Dream Defenders invited the school board to come to this meeting.

None of them showed.

But I can feel something building here.

Something the school board will not be able to ignore for very much longer.

Before I head home, I want to say goodbye to a new friend, Councilman Eric

He says I'll find him at a place that's close to his heart.

Somewhere. He finds solace in the ongoing battle over the future of Flint.

Hi. Hey, how you doing?

How are you, company?

This is a place to come and reflect and build back up your

strength and momentum.

It's very encouraging. It's a good place to come every now and then. I worked

over in the plant UAWTF.

And this is the sit -down strike monument.

When you look at these guys, even though they're sitting down, they protest.

Councilman May tells me that in December 1936, workers demanding better wages

and conditions occupied Flint's GM factory.

They stayed through New Year.

As they sit down in the plant, I want to show you what the women did.

They were breaking out the windows and bringing the men food and supplies.

And this woman here took more than one police to drag her on.

She was really something.

Even when the police attacked with tear gas, the workers stayed put for six

weeks.

In the end, General Motors negotiated, acceded to many demands, and for the

first time recognized the United Auto Workers Union.

And unions started to form across all major industries, ushering in a golden

for American workers.

So this monument is a very encouraging place to come in the middle of the

right?

It reminds you that you have to stay active.

There's a spirit of activism here that's really necessary.

I call myself an activist.

You call yourself a what? An activist.

An activist.

They're naming us actorvists. You know, actors, they're also activists.

Right. Mm -hmm.

This monument makes me continue to believe that organizing and fighting is

right. The labor strike was a fight of the middle class to get better working

conditions and economics. The water fight is still an economic turbo

war. You had the emergency manager coming in, taking over control.

And I think that's what I want people to understand about the water crisis. It

wasn't just the quality of the water. It was who would control the water in

the future.

From the history of the city of Flint and the way we've operated as a people,

Flintstones, we will be successful.

I have to show them they will care.

They mess with the wrong people when they mess with Flint.

We're going to stand up and fight back. We ain't taking it. We ain't going to be

quiet. We ain't going to be silent.

We're going to keep on fighting. We're taking it.

But they take it away from us.

On

the

next.

This disease is hollowing out suburban and small -town America.