What is it you wanted me to reconcile myself to?
I was born here almost 60 years ago.
I'm not gonna live another 60 years.
You always told me it takes time.
It's taken my father's time, my mother's time.
My uncle's time.
My brothers' and my sisters' time.
My nieces' and my nephews' time.
How much time do you want for your progress?
( music playing )
Hallease Narvaez:
this beacon of power, steadfast on a predetermined path forward,
and no matter if it's uphill or downhill,
it chugs along, forcing the cars that try to cut through its path
to stop and acknowledge its purpose.
Now I've lived long enough to know that's not the case.
Time, for all of us, is this finite resource,
and we aren't actually promised a specific amount of it either.
So I want to explore hat James Baldwin is talking about,
and show you the amount of time it's taken for us
to get to whatever this year is.
And I'm not even gonna go that far back, okay?
Let's-- let's start with my grandparents' time.
I filmed two of them back in 2013.
Hallease: First question--
when and where were you born?
Maysville, North Carolina, 1933.
I was born in Nash County, North Carolina.
Born 1931,
25th of July.
Announcer:
10 million unemployed on New Year's Eve.
Hallease:
in the middle of the Great Depression,
now arguably one of the greatest
economic downturns of the modern world.
Ms. Walker:
We were on the farm working, and sometimes
you didn't get nothing until Christmas.
And I remember the last year we farmed,
that, uh, he came and brought us a crate of oranges
and set 'em on the porch and said he didn't make no money,
so that's when I decided I had to get out of that.
Couldn't take it no longer.
I came up in Virginia
the first part of 1950.
And then I got a job with a contractor.
In those days, they weren't paying no money.
But, uh, a little bit was better than not at all.
So, somehow they were born into that and survived all of that.
But remember, we're now in 1950s Portsmouth, Virginia.
It's hella segregated.
Ms. Walker:
right across the street was a restaurant.
And the only way we could get food,
you had to go around to the back
and there was a little window,
and you ordered what you wanted
through this little window.
And there was a segregated hospital over there in Maryview.
The blacks was in one section and the whites were in another.
Oh, I had to have a C-section.
Had to cut my stomach and take Johnny out.
- Hallease: Back then? - Yeah.
And they only did it at certain hospitals.
Catholic hospitals would not do it.
And I made a mistake and went over there.
And I almost died. I thought I had died and went to heaven.
Because, you know, the nuns came in, they were looking down.
I said, "My God, I done died and gone to heaven."
Girl, I was sick.
Okay, so, we've made it to the 1950s
and my grandmother has almost died in a segregated hospital
trying to give birth to my uncle via C-section.
Never mind the fact that even today
black women are two to three times more likely to die
from complications due to childbirth in the United States.
We're just not even gonna--
we're-- let's just move past that.
And so, keeping all of that in mind,
I decided to quite literally catch up with my mom and dad.
Good morning.
I'm walking with my mom.
She's on a mission. ( laughs )
I'm trying to get my five-mile walk in.
And to get a good work-out, you gotta move.
You can't take a stroll.
My name is Linda Ann Walker,
and then when I got married, I'm now Clemons.
I was born January 31st, 1958,
in Portsmouth, Virginia.
My full name is Robert Lee Clemons.
The year I was born-- January 5th, 1956.
Born in Portsmouth, Virginia.
How, at this point, I want to remind you all
that my parents are in their mid-60s.
So they lived through Brown vs. The Board of Education,
the desegregation of public schools,
and the Civil Rights movement.
We was right in the middle of it. Right in the midst.
Linda:
basically, the white suburbs.
First of all, I remember I wanted to beat my dad to a pulp.
Remember, my dad's talking about this guy,
this guy that lived through the Great Depression.
And is still alive, by the way. He's still alive.
Where we lived, there were two schools, totally white,
within walking distance of our home.
He decided, "Why did I bus you 16 miles to that school
when you can get up every morning and walk to school?
So you're going over there."
I was always asked, "Why you don't want to play with the other kids?"
"Because they don't want to play with me." Bottom line, you know?
Hallease:
Black kids walking into schools,
and white kids along with their parents spouting hatred at them.
My-- my parents were those kids.
But, thusly, the white kids who are yelling hatred at them,
they're somebody's parents, too.
They're your congressperson, potentially.
They're your local police.
My parents' generation is the generation that's in power right now,
and I don't know how I feel about that.
They had the X, Y, and Z group.
So all the students were categorized.
X meant you were accelerated,
so all of us were bunched into accelerated.
All of us are taking the same classes,
but supposedly, "Oh, if they're smarter or faster,
let's just put them in a group
so they don't get slowed down by the Ys and the Zs."
So, labels. Bad labels.
So, they decided to put me in the "ungraded." Special ed.
And they had all of us in one big room.
I think about 17 of us.
And they brought this Miss Griffin from up North.
She's from the New York area.
Would've been a special ed specialist.
And she turned around and told them,
"He's not special ed.
He's a learn-by-doer, but he's not special ed.
There's nothing wrong with this kid."
And they were like, "No, he's going to special ed."
And she-- she fought for me.
She said, "There's nothing wrong with him."
In those days,
our parents were not educated,
but our parents were smart.
My father had a fifth-grade education.
He learned by doing. That's how he learned.
So that's how he taught me, by doing, by showing me.
By the time I left home, I could rebuild engines,
rebuild cars, re-wire.
He taught me by doing.
I can even remember, like, when you first come in
to your different classroom-- I'll never forget it.
It was my science class, and I remember
this last white kid came in, and it was a boy.
And he looked around and you could see that look,
like, "Ugh, I gotta sit with her."
And so I decided to transfer back
to my original high school in my neighborhood
because I think the great equalizer that they did
was they started what we now know today as magnet schools.
So, uh, they changed our school to a magnet school.
And guess what.
Now everybody wanted to come to that school.
We had a day care center for early childhood education.
We had a restaurant, if you wanted to work in the hospitality services.
And the beginning of computers.
People learned how to do key punch.
I did the nursing program for vocational nursing,
so you could literally go through that high school
and come out with a skill where you could actually make a living wage.
So when it came time, when I got up to a certain size and certain age,
I decided to come in the military.
And my thoughts were, "If I'm gonna get shot at,
I go in the military, I can shoot back."
That was my-- that was my major deal with that.
"They going to shoot at me, I can go in the military, I'll learn to shoot back."
I was, first, "DESTY,"
which is Digital Electronic Technology.
Secondly, I was cryptology,
which is crypto-electronic technology.
Thirdly, bio-medical equipment.
So, my dad joins the Air Force in 1979,
marries my mom, who's now a nurse,
they have my sister,
and that brings us to my time.
My name is Hallease Clemons,
married name Narvaez,
and I am a digital storyteller and video producer,
and I was born August 23rd, 1990,
on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
And I am the only Texan in my family.
It's not their fault. They got here as fast as they could.
So y'all pretty much know what happens during my time.
9/11, Barack Obama becomes the first
black president of the United States.
My whole family was shook about it.
I don't know about yours, but mine was shook.
Because I never thought I'd see one.
I don't think nobody black ever thought they would see one.
When Obama got elected, I kind of felt like--
jeez, I'm getting a little emotional here--
that part of what Dr. King was fighting for
was truly that we would be judged
by the content of our character
and not the color of our skin, because character counts.
And who can blame them, truly?
I mean, considering everything
that they've lived through thus far,
why would anyone think it's possible?
The economic downturn of 2008, 2009 is upon us.
And the studies and metrics be saying that my generation
will actually not be as economically prosperous as my parents'.
Everything they strived for, it's all undone.
Then Trayvon Martin happens, Michael Brown happens.
Tamir Rice happens. Sandra Bland happens.
These people, they become household names for all the wrong reasons.
And now the pandemic happens,
with its own health and economic effects
that unequivocally affect black and brown people more in this country.
And I just can't help but wonder, what's this all for?
Especially when I think about the next generation.
Hallease: It's you.
- Yeah! Yeah! - Yeah.
Yeah!
What'd you find?
( laughs ) Rocks. Awesome.
??:
and, you know, he's a mixed child,
and that comes with its own other set of issues,
because everyone isn't gonna be so receptive
and they're gonna be asking, "What are you?"
And my thing is, I don't think he should have to choose.
He should be able to embrace his African-American culture
and I feel like his Hispanic culture
is just as important, is just as valid,
and that he shouldn't have to choose.
He should just be Cedric.
I don't think this'll be over, not in my lifetime,
and probably not in his lifetime.
This is nothing new. I grew up with it.
I grew up with people being hung.
I grew up with people being shot.
The only thing new here is they're getting caught.
Now more than ever, I'm convinced that progress
happens begrudgingly.
Maybe progress isn't defined by laws, but by people,
like that woman who saw the humanity in my father,
and just acknowledged that he's a kinetic learner.
Or maybe it's the countless people
who pushed my mother forward
to turn her living-wage job
into a fully realized career
without a college degree.
I don't know if my family is where it is today
because of this country or in spite of it,
but I do know this.
( railroad crossing bell ringing )
We are the train,
and we will continue to push and move forward,
whether you get on or not.
Because I don't have time to waste waiting for you.
I've been here for 30 years.
I hope to be granted at least another 30 more.
So it is irrelevant to me
to consider how much time
you want for my progress.
How are you progressing your community forward? Big, small?
Maybe for some of you, it is about getting involved in local politics
and representing your community there.
That's great. Maybe for some of you right now,
it's just about listening and beginning to do that inner work
to unpack and begin to unlearn a few things
about our society, our culture.
If that's the case, in the description box,
I've included a few links that go into more detail
of everything I covered in this film.
And then maybe for some of you, it is about your art
and how you use your art to push things forward.
There's no wrong way to take action,
the point is that you do.
Let me know in the comments below,
and I'll see you when I see you.