Original subtitles

- [Man] Our history is no more

than a series of incredible events.

Each one of us can influence its course.

(instrumental music)

The tiniest of our decisions

can influence the future of mankind.

To know the past is to anticipate the future.

December 1965, Tennessee.

Former Confederate officers meet in secret

and found the Ku Klux Klan.

December 1, 1955.

Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black woman,

refuses to give up her seat to a white person

and is arrested.

August 29, 1963.

Before 250,000 people the Reverend Martin Luther King

delivers his famous I Have a Dream speech.

These three intimately connected events are the key moments

in the history of the emancipation of African Americans

and will lead to the end of segregation.

Let's see how.

(uplifting music)

In today's world, after centuries of struggle,

human slavery is officially illegal.

Of course, that has not always been the case.

Mid-19th century, State of Mississippi

in the South of the United States of America.

Imported as merchandise from Africa dozens of years before,

the black slave community consists of four million persons

out of the total population of 31 million.

Their status is clear.

They are goods, in the same way as objects or animals.

The slave trade is banned in 1808

but slavery is still very much present.

And it divides the country.

In the North, the states are highly industrialized

with a population of 20 million.

New ideas from Europe spread rapidly and very soon

there are those who seek to ban slavery.

They are called abolitionists.

In the South, cotton and tobacco are the main sources

of wealth and vast plantations use millions of slaves.

With a population of nine million, the southern states

are more traditionalist, defend their way of life,

and are fiercely opposed to the end of slavery,

which would destroy their economy.

Industrial abolitionists in the North

versus slave-owning planters in the South.

And into this turbulent context steps a man

who will be capital in the building of the United States,

Abraham Lincoln.

A supporter of the abolitionist cause,

Lincoln is immediately seen as a threat to the slave owners.

The southern states declare that if Lincoln is elected,

they will secede.

In other words, they will leave the union.

Abraham Lincoln becomes

the 16th President of the United States

and the first to have to do with a crisis as serious

as a sedition of seven states.

(people yelling indistinctly)

This is the beginning of a war of secession.

- [Woman] Welcome to the memory of humanity.

Here we can control time,

analyze and compare billions of events,

and order them to rewrite history endlessly.

For example, let us imagine that for awhile

we would become a slave.

We would be considered as merchandise

in the same way as cattle or a television set.

People could buy us and then sell us.

This status would be for life.

There is no possible way out unless by some miracle

our owner should one day agree to release us, to free us.

We would pass nothing onto our children other than slavery.

Those very children could even be sold to other owners,

separating our families forever.

In the 18th century a veritable trading machine

is established, the triangular trade.

Captured by enemy tribes, African slaves

are exchanged for goods from Europe,

then cross the Atlantic in subhuman conditions

to be exchanged a second time with the American colonists.

The ships finally return to Europe loaded with merchandise

to continue the cycle.

Slavery is an ancient phenomenon

but is far from being eradicated in our modern age.

From Christian slaves traded by the Arabs

into the Roman economy, slavery has blighted every age,

every continent, and every people.

In our day, it is officially banned,

but modern slavery is very much alive.

(soft music)

- [Man] The Civil War.

With 600,000 dead, it is still the bloodiest conflict

ever fought on United States soil.

Of more than two million soldiers

enlisted in the Northern armies,

180,000 blacks will fight in 163 units.

While representing barely 1% of the population of the North,

blacks make up around 10% of the armies' numbers.

On January 31, 1865, congress adopts the 13th Amendment,

which abolishes slavery.

A few months later, after four years of struggle,

the last southern army surrenders.

The War is over.

The South is ruined.

Humiliated by its defeat, ravaged by unemployment,

and traumatized at the sight of former slaves

becoming equal to whites,

a heavy deep resentment against the northern states

sets in and lasts for decades.

From this hatred the Ku Klux Klan is born.

In December 1865,

a mere few days after the total abolition of slavery,

former Confederate officers gathered to form

what is to become the most infamous and the bloodiest

of American terrorist organizations.

The Ku Klux Klan recognizes two enemies,

blacks and federal power.

In the beginning it is about creating fear,

disguising themselves in large white sheets

to bring terror to the black population at night.

But things escalate rapidly.

Insults give way to threats, to harassment,

to torching schools and homes, and then to murder.

The Klan grows from day to day

until it forms a veritable secret army.

Between 1866 and 1914 a total of 4,600 people,

mostly blacks, fall victim to nighttime raids.

- [Woman] A certain sort of peace can be a prelude to war.

The heart of victory is to achieve

the more you want to make the vanquished pay.

Why show clemency when you've just been fighting?

If you forgave too easily, the struggle and the sacrifices

demanded of the people would lose their meaning.

So we impose war reparations on the defeated.

We confiscate their territories.

We act like masters,

enough to heighten the resentment of an enemy

already humiliated, enough to compromise the peace.

In 1918 the armistice signed between France and Germany

was extremely harsh on the latter.

While just having lost more than two million

of its citizens for nothing,

Germany is saddled with very heavy financial compensation.

The country is thus plunged into a deep economic crisis.

Unemployment and resentment provide fertile ground

for hatred and extremism.

The 1918 armistice

carries the seeds of the Second World War.

In the United States the defeat of the South in 1865

sets the stage for the racial conflicts to come.

- [Man] After the Civil War federal laws imposed

black/white equality throughout the country.

However each state retained some room for maneuver.

Local laws, which can be in addition to the federal laws,

provide more.

The southern states will use this system

to get around the principle of equality

that is imposed upon them legally.

This is the emergence of the Black Codes.

A ban on interracial marriages,

strict separation of black and white on transport

and in public places, schools, and hospitals,

more seriously the addition of compulsory literacy,

or hereditary tests, reduced the number of blacks

allowed to vote by 90%.

Because they had no choice,

the whites accept treating the blacks as equals,

but no law says that they have to live together.

Equal but separate.

At the end of the 19th century

segregation splits the country in two.

The principle is this.

Each state is allowed by law

to impose racial segregation measures.

The only requirement, offer the same conditions

to the various racial groups.

For example, the same number of seats reserved

for blacks and whites on a bus.

These laws vary according to the states

and an action that is authorized in one county

may be totally illegal in the next county.

This situation lasts for more than 50 years.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled

such laws are unconstitutional.

Officially segregation no longer exists.

In theory, therefore, black students can attend schools

previously reserved for whites.

Dorthy Counts is 15.

She advances amidst shouts and insults.

People spit on her.

They throw stones at her.

She is one of the first black students

to try to attend a white school.

No teacher accepts to teach her.

(people yelling indistinctly)

It's a confrontation between the federal state

and local mindsets.

Black students are escorted by the National Guard

or the Federal Police simply to be able to study.

- [Woman] The United States has a history

that is both short and complex.

The pace of their development

piling one layer of nationality upon another

in a very short time makes them a country

that is unique in the world by its diversity.

Communities both numerous and of different cultures

find themselves living together for better or for worse.

Segregation is the fruit of its history.

Other countries have experienced the same sort

of racial separation.

In 1948 in South Africa a regime of separation

between original black and white European populations

slowly appears.

The whites, holding power, impose apartheid.

Once again these laws originate from a minority population

that fears it will disappear.

In a reflex reaction of survival, it started to

oppress and marginalize 80% of the country's inhabitants,

creating a climate of social instability.

After 40 years, apartheid finally disappears

with the combined action of the President of South Africa

and especially of Nelson Mandela,

an opposition politician having spend 27 years in prison

for his essentially peaceful action.

A minority regime has only one method of staying in power,

the use of force.

(soft music)

- [Man] Baptist minister Martin Luther King

experiences segregation as an injustice

because although the separation is certainly there,

the equality is still a long way off.

At the age of six it had to be explained to him

that two of his former classmates

could no longer play with him.

They were white

and had just started at a school that did not accept blacks.

A little later, after falling in love with a white girl,

the couple had to give up all hope of marrying,

knowing perfectly well that in this society

their lives would become hell.

His struggle?

The right to vote, the right to work,

wage equality, and the end of segregation.

His method?

Faced with an unjust law, you must disobey without violence.

This is civil disobedience.

1955, the City of Montgomery, Alabama.

An event will allow Martin Luther King

to test his method on a life-size scale.

Ever since 1900 Montgomery buses have had

some sections reserved for whites and others for blacks.

Blacks had to buy their ticket, get off the bus,

and reboard from the rear.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Louise Parks,

a 42-year-old black woman,

gets on the bus and sits in a seat reserved for blacks.

As the bus fills up, the driver tells her

to give her seat up to whites who are standing.

She refuses.

The driver calls the police, who arrest her.

Immediately Martin Luther King seizes on the occasion.

He leads what is to become a veritable boycott.

From now on blacks do not take the bus.

They choose to carpool or walk long distances.

The idea is to stifle the company financially,

to force it to change its regulations.

Martin Luther King is arrested, imprisoned.

His house is set on on fire.

But in 1956 comes victory.

Segregation on the buses is declared illegal.

The same method will be used again and again,

always without violence,

sometimes by a simple occupation of premises.

Throughout his life

the minister applies the Christian principle.

When faced with violence, turn the other cheek.

Despite threatening letters, the target of an attack

on his home and therefore his family, he will never give up

because for him, violence breeds violence.

One day he even finds himself

besieged in a church by over 300 demonstrators

armed with bricks and teargas grenades.

After obtaining the resignation

of the Mayor of the City of Birmingham,

and in particular the firing of the racist and violent

Chief of Police, he organizes a march on Washington.

Martin Luther King understands that the nonviolent struggle

must be carried out under the eyes of the cameras.

(people cheering)

Before 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial,

he delivers what will become the most famous speech

in the race struggle in the United States.

(dramatic music)

- [Woman] We have just reached a turning point.

A turning point is a key event, a crossroads in our history

where the world swings one way or the other.

The Reverend Martin Luther King has just delivered a speech

that will become famous and mark our minds forever.

To the eyes and ears of the world, he brings a message

of hope and reconciliation, affirming the desire for unity.

His words, open and moderate, do not close doors.

They throw them wide open.

His vision makes change possible.

Taking inspiration from the courage of people

who dared defy authority, like Dorothy Counts or Rosa Parks,

he allows the United States to change direction smoothly

and to leave segregation behind.

What would have happened if nobody, unlike Rosa Parks,

had shown the courage to say no?

If there had been no Martin Luther King

to take up her defense, the situation would have worsened.

It could only go that way.

Harassment and injustices from the whites towards the blacks

would have continued again and again

till they reached the point of no return.

In the face of despair,

black communities would have turned to radical leaders

and would have descended into the path of violence.

In the big cities, repeated riots would certainly have led

to armed confrontation with the police.

Blood would have demanded blood.

To control the situation and protect its own,

the white population in power would probably have passed

laws banning black populations from leaving the ghettos,

perhaps even going so far as to pen them

behind high barbed wire fences.

The situation would have become highly explosive.

- [Man] Violence breeds violence.

Hatred breeds hatred.

From 1930, in parallel with the peaceful struggle

of the Reverend Martin Luther King, radical groups

born of racism and segregation gradually appear.

In Detroit,

Nation of Islam is a political religious organization.

In the beginning

there are no more than a few hundred members.

In 1963, the year of the March on Washington,

there are 30,000.

The group has a security division,

actually a veritable private army,

and places the emphasis on self defense.

On one side Martin Luther King reaffirms his desire

not to divide the country and expresses his wish

to see an America united in brotherhood.

On the other side whites are classed as an inferior race

created by a black scientist 6,000 years ago.

They are the devil on Earth.

There are even demands for the creation of a black state

in the heart of the United States.

Malcolm X, the official spokesman, states,

"I am not an American."

For them it's freedom or death.

This is the reaction to segregation and the Ku Klux Klan,

the very opposite of Martin Luther King.

Malcolm X is shot to death barely one year

after Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

And the rush to violence is only just beginning.

1966 sees the birth of the Black Panther Party,

an armed group of extremists considered as terrorists.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King is assassinated

by a white segregationist.

Two days later, Bobby Hunter,

the Black Panthers's treasurer,

disarmed and with his hands in the air,

is gunned down by 12 shots from the police.

The decades that follow will see a sharp ghettoization

of the black population,

especially in the Bronx neighborhood of New York

or South Central in Los Angeles,

and be witness to many bloody riots.

But that is another story.

- [Woman] When faced with injustice and oppression,

the most natural response is often anger and then violence.

Throughout the world many groups have chosen violent

rather than democratic action to bring about change.

Intimidation, kidnapping, assassination,

hijacking, terrorist attack.

The publicity given to terrorism is tempting.

The effect is guaranteed.

The greater the violence, the more the world hears you.

But does it listen to you?

How many laws have been changed or dropped

because of an attack?

How many governments have resigned because of a hijacking?

Violence is certainly visible but it creates fear.

It frightens those who might understand,

alienates those who could participate.

Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi,

between the three of them have achieved more through

nonviolence than all the terrorist groups in the world.

They understood that power rests

on acceptance by the people.

If the people follow you, you can change the world.

The United States experienced slavery and segregation.

They introduced race laws.

They experienced unprecedented rioting,

witnessed the birth of radical terrorist groups.

However, overcoming the historical fears,

rising above their prejudices and their resentment,

they were able to make progress,

forgive the past without forgetting it.

In 2008, 40 years after the assassination

of Martin Luther King by a segregationist,

Barack Obama becomes

the first black President of the United States of America,

and this fact alone speaks louder than any words.

(instrumental music)