#BlackLivesMatter Jim Crow and Apartheid (segregation systems in America and the South Africa)

one this girl here was the first negro to show up at central high school the day that a federal court ordered it integrated he was followed in front of the school by an angry crowd any of them shouting epithets episode 1957 alabama in the united states black americans are challenging racial segregation they're physically attacked and defied by southern politicians all the people of the south are in favor of segregation and supreme court or no supreme court we are going to maintain segregated schools down in dixie 1957 south africa segregation is being extended by a white minority government afraid of being swamped do you think that the south african government's racial policy is right i really do because we cannot mix with the lower nations at the moment unless they are cultivated and educated and so on do you feel yourself that as a white minority can continue to maintain their position most decidedly forever forever this is the story of the fight for equal rights in two different countries in both south africa and the southern states of america black men and women faced segregation that was backed by the force of law the circumstances were very different but in both countries change only came after ordinary people took their protest onto the streets it took nearly 10 more years in the united states for blacks to achieve the same legal rights as whites in south africa it would take nearly half a century in the land of the free slavery had been ended 90 years before and the united states constitution promised equality before the law but in the 1950s in the south where 10 million blacks lived it was the state laws that counted the daily lives of the black minority were governed by a mesh of local laws still enforced to keep blacks and whites apart it was government-sanctioned racism you had formal barriers to jobs to freedom of movement the constitution of the united states did not protect uh every citizen people were starting to talk about integration but white supremacists like the ku klux klan played on popular fears of what it could bring they want to throw white children and colored children into the belting part of integration throughout of which will come a conglomerated ballada mongrel clash of people but they had few rights in their own country three million whites had the best land and the wealth and blacks weren't allowed to vote i think the native uh left to the people who know how to handle them is certainly he's a fine fellow i've had no trouble i've been on this farm for four years now and quite frankly i haven't prosecuted one single boy there was no need for it black south africans kept the farms and factories going but the growing number of blacks in the cities was feared and resented by the whites christina hadaby worked as a maid in johannesburg they wouldn't let me use their plates and cups i had my own plate and an empty tin can as a cupid there was a dog's kennel out at the back and my dishes were put next to the dog apparently it was as though i was a dog myself they treated the dog better than a black person as a black you were the scum of the earth you worked for these people and you cooked for them they ate your food but they despised the majority of the whites were descendants of europeans who'd settled in southern africa 300 years before the africanas had their own language their own political party and their own church which taught that white superiority and rule over blacks was the will of god nico smith was a theology student and a true believer they were the inferior people they were the strange people they had a different culture and i also in this to a certain extent believed that they were the cursed people of whom the bible says that they were the descendants of him and they were cursed and so they must be the labourers and i couldn't imagine that one should ever really associate with him or even touch them when the afrikaner national party won power in the 1948 election they gave discrimination the force of law the all-white parliament passed a series of measures that extended segregation institutionalizing white supremacy into a system that became known as apartheid in 1957 while segregation was being extended in south africa it was starting to come under attack in the united states arguing that the u s constitution rendered local segregation laws illegal black americans got the u.s federal courts to order schools to integrate no blacks had ever been to the central high school in little rock arkansas but nine children became a test case to break the color bar ernest green was one of them it was at that time the premier high school in the mid-south it always turned out large numbers of merit scholars but it was a barrier it was something that because i was a black kid i could not attend there at first the state governor used local reservists the national guard to keep the children from setting foot in a whites only school under pressure from washington he finally agreed to let them in but when the white crowd waiting outside threatened to turn into a lynch mob the children had to be evacuated to safety next day president eisenhower sent in the us army to clear white objectives from the street and restore order sixteen-year-old ernest greene tried to go to school again this time with an armed escort we were in a station wagon in the front was an army jeep with a machine gun mount the jeep let us out we got out a cordon of soldiers surrounded us we went down this walk up those steps it really was an exhilarating feeling that you had finally accomplished something you could see the cameras and the people across the street uh and that all of it was focused on the nine of us going to the school it was the realization that this was not the end this was just the beginning little rock was a symbolic victory though thousands of schools stayed segregated as the civil rights movement spread across the country it showed how mass action could succeed where court orders on their own had failed black americans found they could start to change things when they joined together to boycott shops or employers who discriminated at white sony restaurants they adopted sit-in tactics in tennessee bernard lafayette was one of the protesters and would take seats quietly at the lunch counter you would not say anything to anybody but set there until you asked to be served there was the the waitress who was very panicky walking up and down and very confused about what to do and very clear that she was not going to serve us i'm sorry i'm management does not allow us to serve [ __ ] in here then there were these uh fellas with the ducktales haircuts and they were walking behind us so they would make cat calls they would say what are you doing in here jungle bunnies you know you get out of here you're not going to get serving here and we sat at the counters and i was praying when this lady white lady came and she put her cigarette out on my arm so i calmed myself down while i was calming down she lit the rest of her matches and pulled my poncho out and dropped the lidded matches down my back paul laprad was pulled off the seat of the lunch counter and he was kicked and beaten on the floor and so they decided they were going to make an example out of him because he was white the police arrested the students who hadn't fought back not their attackers but the movement carried on within months 50 000 had joined sitting protests in 112 cities in 1961 campaigners turned to the long distance bus lines seats on the buses were segregated like the waiting rooms but volunteers calling themselves freedom riders ignored the rules and sat together one bus was firebombed by whites but groups of young protesters kept on traveling on the buses including jim's work i was going to sit in the front of the bus with paul brooks paul sat by the window i sat by the aisle the rest of the blacks and one white girl who went on salem mccullum were going to sit in the back when the freedom riders crossed alabama floyd mann was in charge of state police and tried to give them protection we had placed 16 state trooper card in front of those buses and 16 state trooper cars behind them we also had an air reconnaissance flying over those buses just in case they had put up some bridges or what have you and tried to sabotage those buses but at montgomery another police force from the city was meant to take over all of a sudden as we got to the city limits of montgomery alabama all of the protection faded away no more state troopers no more helicopters as they drew into the bus station a crowd appeared they sat on the bus for a little while and i saw the mob begin to just build build just like a kind of a river you know just growing growing growing you could see things in their hands hammers chains pipes it was a frenzy they just went wow and get the [ __ ] lover i mean i was the only white guy there they were screaming and hollering and their faces were all frowned up until they grabbed jim's work and they took him and then knocked him over the rail and they picked him up and then knocked him over the rail again they knocked his teeth out i remember getting kicked in the spine and hearing my back crack and the pain and i passed out again and i woke up and i was again in a moving vehicle with some very southern sounding whites and i figured i'm off to get lynched we're dedicated to this we'll take hitting we'll take beating we're willing to accept death segregation must be broken down as the sittings and arrests continued the civil rights movement gripped by american over 36 000 people had been sent to jail for protesting segregation laws freedom now movement hear me we are requesting all citizens to move into washington to go by planes by in august that year a quarter of a million people black and white came to washington to demand a civil rights act that would finally guarantee their freedoms martin luther king spoke from the lincoln memorial i have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of that character i have a dream i have a dream that one day down in alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and sisters and brothers i have a dream in south africa the white government was working steadily towards another dream and apparatus of racial control on a scale not seen since nazi germany was being honed and finessed mr white just what does this policy or apartheid mean in practice in terms of the everyday life of the people you know it i think you put it this way that apartheid is intended to keep the races apart in all sorts of ways residentially you already have big native locations residents under the group areas act the attempt is now to separate out your kid-colored people your mixed bats your indian group your african group so they're all residentially apart this is a bigger part to make sure the race is kept apart everyone was required to register their origins sex and marriage between races was made illegal and complex rules classified people who already had mixed blood white plus white gives white but white plus anything else cannot give white it can only give colored black plus black gives black but black plus colored gives colored justina koa was a hospital nurse where i started as a student nurse one side was for the whites and the other side was for the blacks white patients separately whitenesses and white doctors and then this other side it was black nurses black patients the white patients got the best of everything from medicine treatment types of operations and and everything there was no communication whatsoever with a white side of the hospital with no we did not know what was happening on the other side it was a separate development altogether as as if it's a berlin wall there were strict rules on blood transfusions there was no way whereby a european would get blood from a black donor because the very er the very relatives the patients relatives when they look at the bottle and they see that goodness me the donor is a black a baboon a native oh no and then it will cause a lot of route as part of the effort to confirm black africans in their subservient role black schools were given a new syllabus under the bantu education act they were to concentrate on practical household skills what is the use of teaching a bantu child mathematics asked the native affairs minister john carney went to school in new brighton all the other information about the outside world was extracted like a tooth out of our education system what was left was the skewed sense of an education which prepared us to be good servants and nothing else you say i want to be a teacher i want to be a lawyer i want to be a doctor i want to be an architect and your parents would say those are dreams for white children in johannesburg there was stage last weekend the first move in a campaign that may lead to civil disobedience thousands of colored people went to attend a protest meeting called by the african national congress resistance to apartheid was difficult and dangerous but the long-established african national congress called a campaign of mass civil disobedience in 1955 the anc published a freedom charter which proclaimed south africa belongs to all who live in it black and white the government response was to arrest 156 anc leaders and charge them with high treason the trials lasted five years meanwhile to ensure the physical separation of the races non-whites were told where they could and couldn't live black settlements within white areas termed black spots were to be cleared and their people shifted out in the heart of johannesburg places like sapphire town which for years had been a threat to the public health and safety were tackled with vigor and energy it was alleged that the bantu were dissatisfied and would refuse to move in fact they were happy to get away from these plague spots where they had been obliged to live in thousands but the song they sang showed how they really felt christina lived in sevilla town we sang this song to let them know we didn't want to move we all stood together before we got into the trap but they forced us into the trucks at gunpoint there was no choice transports the rejoicing bantu whose hearts are filled with heavy expectations they're on their way to a new home meadowland where one can breathe the new townships outside the cities were to be the dormitories for black workers and a new regime the pass laws was used to control their movements to enter a white area they needed a special stamp showing they had a job all non-whites over 16 men and women had to carry passes at all times this book was the only book which involved the life of a black person in south africa if you haven't got this book you are nothing it controlled the life of everybody it controlled your work it controlled your movement it controlled your life as a whole without this book you were nothing any black south african could be arrested if caught without a pass book bongani come come here in 1960 a fresh wave of protests were aimed at the past laws there was a meeting to which we were all called to discuss these past books chiefly said they must be burned because we don't want these past books thousands were prepared to take the consequences of burning their passes and joined the demonstrations the pan-african congress a breakaway group from the anc planned a mass meeting against the pass laws in march 1960 in a township called sharpville what happened next tested the limits of peaceful protest it went down to the past office as we stood there everybody was pouring in from the township children women kids you know we were singing songs of african ah gossip africa singing singing waiting for the reply people dancing there you know enjoying they're all helping these people the crowd of around 15 000 surrounded a police station under the command of colonel penal the police got they had their rifles at the ready he dropped his battery after quite a while everything was quiet i pick up my head and i look around i look around i find everything is quiet i find everybody everybody bodies are laying down there my uncle died there my younger brother and my sister those are the people who died there i've lost people that i laughed and people that i needed them sometimes and i know i sit down i find my things are not going right as if my mother was here my uncle was here everything should have went right 67 died that afternoon most of them were shot in the back there are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed defenseless people demonstrations against the government by africans continue on an increasing scale despite the decree of a state of emergency and the arrest of hundreds of leaders of the opposition in response to sharpville protests broke out across the country convinced that non-violent demonstrations could achieve nothing a wing of the anc led by nelson mandela began a sabotage campaign but like the non-violent protests the tactics failed mandela was arrested in 1962 and later in 1964 sentenced to life imprisonment on robben island mandela had declared in court i plan sabotage because all lawful methods of opposition were closed i have cherished the ideal of democratic society with equal opportunity for all that is an ideal he said for which i am prepared to die and outside the pretoria court nelson mandela's wife stood with the crowd around her singing the african freedom song i shall never lose hope and my people shall never lose hope in fact we expect that the work will go on congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill ever to be written into the law and thus reaffirms the conception of equality for all men that began with lincoln and the civil war 100 years ago in 1964 the same year nelson mandela was sentenced to prison the civil rights act introduced by president johnson gave black americans a real advance this civil rights act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states in our homes and in our hearts to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country the civil rights act outlawed racial discrimination in all public places and gave black americans the clear legal rights they'd fought for but their very success provoked a final stand by southern whites alabama's governor george wallace led the fight against an integrated america i draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and i say segregation now segregation tomorrow and segregation forever when governor wallace stood in the door down at the university of alabama and he said segregation today segregation tomorrow and segregation now on from now on i said no sir i said you mistaken it will not be segregation from now on the last great civil rights struggle in the south was waged to get all black americans the right to vote they had it in theory but in countless southern towns local registrars refused to put them on the voting roll every time you would go down there they would make you come back come back next month come back in two months time or you may have to come back next year and they intimidated us so much so until some people just wouldn't go back in alabama only ten percent of the black americans were actually registered the number one trick was to ask questions that no one can answer like how many uh uh bubbles in a bar of soap right they asked blacks that but they didn't ask whites that so you asked impossible and stupid and inane questions of people you did not want to vote knowing that these had no answers on this side right here you interpreted you know where to tell what it means just like you meaning your understanding of it can you explain the constitution can you tell us what the constitution mean every word of the constitution well we didn't know it did not matter whether you had a phd degree or no degree they just would not register negro selma alabama was a center of white resistance and objecy when a group of teachers tried to present their case at the registration office they were stopped by sheriff clarke this courthouse for business seemed to think just the uh disneyland or something on parade do you have any business in the courthouse the only business we have was to come back to the board of registers to register before the registrar's is not in session this afternoon as you win form you came down to make a mockery out of this courthouse the group was led by ct vivian if you're wrong the idea was to beat people down beat them away destroy them physically destroy their right to even work in a town if they had the if they had had the courage to even try to register to vote and you misused democracy in the street you beat people bloody in order that they will not have the privilege to vote the act by sheriff clark was the normal act of the south this this is the kind of violation of the constitution the violation of the court order the violation of decent citizenship you can turn your back on me but you cannot turn your back upon the idea of justice you can turn your back now and you can keep the club in your hand but you cannot beat down justice and we will register to vote because as citizens of these united states we have the right to do it to protest the continuing voting violations a march was organized from selma to the state capital of montgomery your order go home or go to your church this march will not continue it was stopped by the police on the bridge out of the city television showed the scenes across the united states you see as soon as people could see the faces as soon as they could see what we were doing and what we were about and understand that so that it couldn't be lost in a plethora of words uh in the daily newspaper right uh then they could see it it was obvious this must stop and full rights must be given to all of our citizens civil rights workers rushed in from across the country the president pledged his support and with all of america watching a column of 3 000 marchers made another attempt to cross the bridge out of selma there would never be such unity and optimism again though black americans still faced poverty and individual prejudice it was the high point of the civil rights campaign a new act was rushed through congress guaranteeing the right to vote within 10 years the number of registered black voters trebled to 3 million in south africa the news from the united states was an affront to staunch africanas like nico smith they've allowed the black americans to come and live amongst them and they try to tell them that they are equal but they are not equal so they should have separated them and give them their own part of the country where they can live and where they can develop south africa was now moving beyond simple segregation to completely separate development the guiding genius was henry forward policy is one which is called by an afrikaans word apartheid and i'm afraid that has been misunderstood so often it could just as easily and perhaps much better to be described as a policy of good neighborliness accepting that there are differences between people because while these differences exist and you have to acknowledge them at the same time you can live together aid one another but that can best be done when you act as good neighbors always do in meticulous detail the south african government devised a new racial map in which good neighbors would have as little to do with each other as possible from the 1960s the entire black population was allocated to one of eight so-called tribal homelands each was to have its own citizenship and eventually its own independence the homelands covered 13 of south africa the remaining 87 was for the whites to complete the grand design over three and a half million south africans were forcibly relocated was deported from johannesburg to the kwazulu homeland in the town i can't say how we were meant to survive under the apartheid laws my wife would often have to go to neighbors houses to ask for food and that i wouldn't eat because otherwise it wouldn't be enough for the children the homelands were used as a vast labor recruitment camp for white south african employers what has he got to offer he's got his labor to offer if he doesn't work for the european then obviously he will die a family in this reserve but it wasn't easy to get off the reserves africans had to have an official job permit to go and work in white areas and those who did were bulleted in overcrowded and primitive township hostels treated as outsiders foreigners in their own land the conditions black africans were living under began to disturb even some of the government's own supporters including nico smith so much so that he left the national party and began to speak out in opposition for instance in the black township i was shocked because there was nothing there were no cinemas no proper shops no cafes no playgrounds for children no recreational opportunities and i just every night i saw these thousands of black people streaming into the township and in the morning they stream out again so it was actually only a slave camp you can call it with any political activity for blacks now banned one of the few outlets for open protest was the theater a play called sizwi banzi is dead was a landmark john carney was one of the actors there was so much confidence in the state and the white community that the situation of the black people is solved once and for all it was at that time that cesar banzi exploded on the stages of township halls community halls church halls classrooms and some private white little spaces within the cities that suddenly there was a fever again you know what sizwe if i were to tell you the troubles they gave me before they could put the right stamp in my book born in this town the troubles they gave me before i could get a job to stay alive born in this area the hell i went through before they could give me this two-roomed house born in this country jesus christ we start screaming the whole bloody night why is there so much trouble mr bunt we knew that this has become a powerful political weapon in educating our people in informing our people in giving our people back their own voices in giving them the confidence to stand up and talk about it for the first time people in chibins in schools in churches began to refer to these issues not necessarily the play itself but to talk about the plight of the black people under the plus laws next time next time that bloody white man calls you a boy don't run up to him and lick his ass like we all do turn back and face him white man i'm a man not a boy in 1976 open opposition surfaced again sparked by a change in the schools okay africans was difficult as a subject so we couldn't imagine having to do subjects like history to be converted to custodians and mathematics the skin and all what have you so we had to indicate that we don't want africans and initially our aim was not to destroy the aim was a peaceful demonstration in june 1976 thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets of soweto the new wave of opposition was led by the young suddenly a tear gas went off we didn't understand what was tear gas as we were retreating trying to resist tempers fled and we started throwing stones was caught up in the violence and the children were around there and running away running this way and all these mothers from here they would stand outside here and cry stop stop shooting our children stop shooting our children and the children were running all over here and coming to our houses and hiding themselves we went on burning properties everything that was owned by whites in the township post office municipality office it was just a target because it was the government's thing so we had to destroy all those we went to those shopping centers which were like on fire and we're looting and to us is we were taking what belonged to the white man what belonged to the system hundreds of young people now cross the borders to join anc guerrillas training abroad those who stayed followed the anc instructions to make the country ungovernable and a new mass movement the united democratic front kept up the pressure for the release of a leader the young had never seen we know mandela he's a leader he's not a terrorist and he shall never be one but as long as the government does not want to release mandela there shall be no peace in this country mandela must be released unconditionally and with all the political leaders must be released as the government held out south africa became an international pariah one by one foreign companies withdrew investment and foreign governments imposed sanctions on trade within the country militant trade unionists staged a series of political strikes tournament busani was in the car workers union i told my wife and my son look we are at warner so we've got to make sure that we don't use too much money the only thing we should do now is to buy basic food in order to save so that we can survive because we don't know how long this struggle will take and it might end up with us losing our jobs so you must expect that the strikes began to take their toll tournament fusani lost his job sacrificing that much has something in return that will happen to the one who's oppressing me forcing him to give up faced with a crippled economy the government began secret talks with the anc then a group of white businessmen met anc leaders in exile i think we found enough ground between us to make the prospect of further talks quite valuable i think in 1990 the government responded to the mounting pressure for the release of nelson mandela president f w de clerk spoke at the opening of parliament the government has noted that mr nelson mandela has declared himself to be willing to make a constructive contribution to the peaceful political process in south africa i wish to put it plainly that the government has taken a firm decision to release mr mandela unconditionally with nelson mandela's release on the 11th of february south africa seemed on the way to a black majority government it was news most black south africans had thought they'd never hear i don't know what can i say man i'm so happy i'm very very happy i feel like a drunkard i am so happy that i feel drunk but in my soul i was overjoyed because we had done this thing now and now we were going to move on in soweto mandela acknowledged the part south africans had played it is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people ahead lay four more years of division between blacks themselves and between the anc and the government as they wrangled over the transfer of power ladies and gentlemen we are now going to demonstrate to you how to go about with voting when an election date was finally set people who'd never had democracy had to be taught how to vote excuse me how can we vote when we have not demonstrated this is the product box my sister here is going to demonstrate for us any pallet paper without an official stamp is not valid fold your toilet paper like so that it fits into the pallet box on april the 26th 1994 they could exercise that right for real we didn't sleep because we felt if we slept we'll be late because a lot of people were going to through the voting polls when i woke up at about four o'clock we saw about three long queues we couldn't even know where they were ending it was as even a dream i couldn't believe it you know that it has become possible i thought that these whites will never be willing to stand in one kill with black people we were so used to it blacks and whites stand in different cues now all of a sudden we were in the same queue and i thought for so long that it looked as if it was impossible and now the impossible has become a reality when you are alone in that licking box it was like you were in heaven already and then when you had to check separately it was so funny and you wouldn't you know you thought it's me voting my hands voting for my for for whoever i want to vote for really it was wonderful unforgettable with 18 million people entitled to the vote for the first time an overwhelming majority swept nelson mandela and the anc to power all south africans now had equal rights you

Channel: Norberto M. Garcia

Views: 186,604

Rating: 4.6653256 out of 5

Keywords: Racism, America, Capitalism, Right wing, South, Jim crow, Apartheid, South Africa, Ku Klux Klan, Wallace, TRUMP, 2020

Id: XVw9UjHPEt8

Length: 53min 31sec (3211 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 17 2012