[MUSIC]
I always hated doing family tree projects.
I remember in third grade, this girl won a prize
for tracing her family tree back to the Mayflower.
And I couldn't even get past my great-grandparents.
But it was working on this with my mom,
that I learned the truth about what had happened.
[MUSIC]
My great-grandfather, Thomas William Miles Sr.,
was lynched in 1912 in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Growing up, I had zero want to go to the South.
But now I feel like we need to go see where we came from.
As kids, my grandfather was never discussed.
I knew my father grew up without a father, but we were like,
"What happened? How come they didn't talk about him?" You know?
We know that he had a business on 526 Common.
His house was on 1109 Allen. The undertaker was named J.S. Williams.
We really want to go to the archives just to see,
was there any additional information that we could find?
These are also directories in the time period
in which you guys are looking for your ancestor.
They accused him of writing some insulting letters to a white woman and arrested him.
They didn't have enough evidence, so he was absolved.
But they let him out the back door of the jail,
and there was a mob waiting for him.
Back then, passing a note to a white woman was
enough to get you killed. This was terrorism.
How dare you own a business? We're going to use you as an example
of what happens to Black people if you try to better yourself.
These are the arrest records.
[GASP] Are you serious?
Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't had a chance to look at them yet.
So, wait a minute. They went from the seventh to the fourth?
Tom Miles! I found him. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Wow.
It literally says suspect. Suspect of what? What are you suspicious of?
The family uprooted and came to California. Dad was only six years old. Six years old.
They no longer had a breadwinner. My grandmother had to go out and get a job,
so then my father had to go live with his grandparents.
For what? Because somebody handed somebody some letters.
All they did was break up a family.
Oh, so this is the foundation.
I think technically, his house would have been on that corner, I think.
That corner? And what was here?
I think so.
You know, you can read something. Hear it second-hand.
But it's not the same as when you see it, and feel it.
I think it's starting to hit me, starting, like, last night. Where it was like,
my great-grandfather was lynched. This man was
taken, and he was hung up and strangled to death.
He was also shot. They shot bullets in him.
I'm just hoping I'll feel his spirit there.
Okay.
Wow, yeah. Breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
You know. This is—yeah. Keep breathing.
It is what it is.
[MUSIC]
Come on, baby. Come on.
[CRYING] I'm trying to.
Come on. Come on.
[SOBBING]
[MUSIC]
Obviously, this is not just us. It happened to many families.
Families torn apart, communities torn apart. Loss
of land, loss of businesses, loss of history.
There's a legacy that lives on.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
We can't sleep until innocent Black boys can walk
without fear down the streets of any town in America.
The point of these lynchings at the time
is that there was no accountability.
So to have accountability, that would completely
change the Black experience in America.
And the fact that as a Black person, you don't expect justice.
I'm not trying to get anybody to erase the past.
What I'm trying to say now is that we bring into the present.
You have to recognize the past, to move forward.
[MUSIC]