rights we inherited which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children. and what the rights mean here are they were the right to us right and i was taught in school that we were not defaming slavery we were just defending our us now from the northern aggression the rest why. next we visit the statue of our common ancestor it's very painful to remember the legacy i've been stright where the great grandmother was second cousin or property we saw is painful it's painful gennaro cham is not perfect right now a queen i would i would take him day on the defense of slavery was not something to be honored. gary flowers is a local radio host and custodian of black history in richmond he wants to show me a statue that he fought to get

a rectenna in twenty seventeen so this is mrs maggie cleaned out walker. born to an insulated mother maggie walker was the first black woman to charter a bank in the united states the st luke penny savings bank statues say to the community and say to the world this is someone whose fault to put on a on a literal pedestal that is a woman to be honored and that is a woman to be memorialized so that's what is so disheartening and despicable about the confederate statues because they fought for slavery sedition. secession and racial segregation and so those are not honorable virtues for which to fight nor are they american there is no other country on the planet that honors and statuary the losers of a civil war itself that my ancestors who were burned beat and brutalized

raped by a confederate a confederate thinkers that is a constant symbol to me the confederate statue that we have now honoring a dishonorable man and a dishonorable cause and a dishonorable confederacy. statues mean something. but. there are others in richmond who are adamant the statue should remain the organization sons of confederate veterans has spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to prevent the removal of statues in charlottesville and elsewhere. mr morehead was to gain and anger more headbanging to meet him yes or welcome to richmond and hollywood cemetery a matter told yam a relative of robert e. lee absolutely with the beard with the reddish beard you look more like jim stewart but that's actually. let's take a look at a few things and write. these are the dead from gettysburg

we visit the confederate section of the cemetery with the graves of around two thousand soldiers who died in gettysburg a battle lost by robert e. lee in one thousand nine hundred sixty three it was arguably the turning point in the world. heavy casualties. around fifty thousand soldiers from both sides died in that battle there are a lot of people that feel that those statues need to come down when you look at these monuments just on a pure abstract be they're beautiful works of art. beautiful works of art and then you've got the military brilliance of robert e. lee which is still studied by military theorists today the passion for this issue we is the sins of confederate ancestors they're our family

we review the fact that we feel in our opinion they fought for a noble cause to overthrow it overbearing federal government would you want anybody to talk badly about your family. just the notion of family you know brings up a lot of emotions in me but at the same time if there is a member of one's family that is doing something that you don't agree with you have a responsibility for them to work and we're responsible for the legacy of our ancestors as far as telling the truth as we see it robert e. lee didn't say i'm going to fight for slavery no what he said is i cannot term a sword against virginia so that tells you that the war was not about slavery there are some things we're not going to agree on i appreciate your time and given you are your point of view absolutely. andrews' view that the civil war wasn't

primarily fought to preserve slavery has been debunked by the vast majority of scholars. i'm curious to find out why so many millions of virginians still believe that all of this to an end in pleasure to. christie coleman is an expert on the american civil war and heads the museum in richmond specially devoted to the subject so christi here we are one hundred fifty years after the civil war it seems like a lot of the history and perspectives are still unsettled why is it still such a hot button to day. i think. part of the reason is that we've spent one hundred fifty years lying to each other about what this war was about. we spent one hundred fifty years lying and trying to reinforce the lie and the truth is and it daughters of the confederacy and their historian of the organization a woman by the name of mildred rutherford makes it her business to frame the

narrative that must be in every school or textbook and if it's not there she tells them you must be checked it from your home and you must reject it from your school . and that's exactly what they do so if you wonder why america has such a virgin view about this it was crafted that way the way i see it is that robert e. lee fought for slavery and that's what the civil war was about but. along the way and now i've heard an alternate opinion the reality is men women and children were bought and sold from their families by only ok at arlington. and in many other properties that he and he comes from a family that for generations has bought and sold human beings this way but i'm convinced that the weight of his choices. the death

tolls and the casualties being so high i think weighed on his soul and i think that that is why he was so in his last years was so adamant. to tell others don't put up statues don't relive this let's just let's just be you have the intensity that i see in his images with in your eyes a real ick ick i think that might be a family trait it's probably just beard maybe it's a very good idea to. see what people think i look like he's got. my own view is that the statue should be removed because it glorifies a shameful cause the fight to preserve slavery. over seven hundred thousand

soldiers died in the american civil war the equivalent of seven million today. i guess it gives me some small comfort to know that my ancestor also didn't want any monuments to this dark period in our history. it's time for me to face up to the sins of my ancestors. this church in peter's ville maryland was built by black people my ancestors and slaves. my grandmother used to bring me here as a child. i've come to see two of her friends i've known them since i was young war horse or the male vs you want us to get us out and we're going to everlasting life. clarice in a stellar both descendants of the people my family and slaves i want to know how they feel about them it's not something my family ever discussed. but.

i feel uncomfortable about bringing up the subject of enslavement i don't want to upset them. clearly some i'm wondering if you could tell me about the picture on this book here this is my mom. madeline. and i'm claire. and she was a nurse of this little girl and mom's mother used to work for the least so your mom's mother was born in slave and yes. oh tell her how see he was a slave my great grandfather of the lead property i feel kind of strange about that someone earned how how you feel about that i just live in the present time and i know that i can go anywhere. and do anything i want.

and i don't have to bear down to nobody. see that's that's me in this present time and that's where i am what i wanted to do was go on you know a journey that where i figure out what i can do to make sure that you know we don't start slipping backwards you should just try to make sure that you treat people right don't. don't harbor thinking about what your great great grandfather did so i don't have no hard feelings with you but president you want to do something. but make sure you do something i don't know what you're going to do. it if you win the lottery you can give me a couple. i could do that. could of the met just.

to help you in in your endeavor if you really had it i hope i have because i think you've got a wonderful family. i feel humbled that a sterling priest don't hold any grudge against my ancestors for what theirs endured but i want to honor their call to action. i need to know how much closer we are to racial equality than in my great grandfather's day. baltimore the largest city in maryland is just one hour away. it has a population of three million with a high proportion of black. twenty fifteen there were street protests in baltimore. triggered by the death of

a twenty five year old black man. freddie gray spine was severed while in police custody no officer was ever convicted. i meet up with kwame rose a young political activists who hit the headlines during the protest. kwame was filmed berating a well known t.v. host for failing to report the underlying race related issues fueling the honor asked i want you and oxys to get off almost six because they're not here warning about the boarded up exterior the black right. think things are better they can. even better we have a white supremacist in office now may be just as bad as robert e. lee was donald trump promotes and preys on the races ideologies that exist inside of american society you know we black people built this country from on our hands our blood sweat tears and we haven't got one ounce of compensation reparation or even acknowledgement of the contribution we did what is it that i should know about

baltimore what people should know about baltimore is that we are majority black population. sixty three percent black most of our elected officials are black. but yet the disparity between income between white families and black families is still one of the highest in america this is fells point it's a very white neighborhood. kwame wants to show me that even after racial segregation officially ended baltimore is still divided into rich white and poor black areas. ate here. you know drink here. actually there restaurant right there during opening day of the baseball season. i was actually called a nigger there. i come here knowing that me being here is. kind of a disruption to like the everyday whiteness i love doing and i love making people uncomfortable with my presence. you see the way the police patrol certain blocks so

there's a neighborhood as a way to protect and you go up a couple blocks up the street the police are there to enforce yeah you can you tell the difference you can tell the difference because the police here this is a space where drunken why people are allowed to have a good tom be drunk and it's written off up the street standing on a corner the police are there you know come out and disperse a crowd. it's calm right and there's nothing wrong with that the fact that this city is sixty three percent black and the amount of people represented in certain communities like this aren't right here. i'll take you to a part of baltimore. is pretty great for well. he wants across the slightest centrally you'll be able to tell the difference from where we just came from. you notice all the vacant businesses vacant homes. there are over thirty thousand vacant homes in baltimore the majority concentrated in black neighborhoods. the inequality in

wealthier stock three times more black people than white live below the poverty line and blacks are four times more likely to be unemployed. this is america. richest nation in the world right. this is going more homes this is where freddie great lived. so this is a neighborhood. flooded with poverty and adequate public housing lack of opportunity and jobs for pretty much of your born in this community you're stuck here. most kids that grow up in poverty. baltimore city don't have the chance to leave within five blocks of there. where they were born to really. what's the situation with the police and you can be someone like philander castille who had a weapon that was legally purchased and still killed even though he followed all the rules you can be afraid

a great who ran away as so many examples of black people who did nothing wrong but just were killed because they like ice cube said their skin was their center. in the united states black people are three times more likely than whites to be killed by the police. how do we make sure these people in your homes have the same access to quality of life that the people of fells point. what seems to me like before we can fix anything we have to acknowledge the truth of the situation what an acknowledgment that has to be some type of compensation is of which surely the greatest nation on earth when the people who made the greatest contribution should have access to a quality of life for those who are oppressed and slaves this. summer. i've never really taken the idea of reparations seriously before but meeting with kwame has made me reconsider. i need to learn more about the inequalities that black people continue to experience i'm ready to face more uncomfortable truths.

i wish the world innovation summit for health one community of two thousand health care experts in of ages and policy makers from one hundred countries. one experience sharing best practices and innovative ideas. one goes to hopefully a world through global collaboration. apply now to attend the twenty eighteen wish summit. week will get a feel for that against that and that's in the club guy going to send us a little. very very very nice. person was shot forty dollars just that. i. showed documentaries from around the world about those who won't give up their fight for justice. al-jazeera selects justice.

al jazeera. and for you. hello again i'm fully back to go with the headlines on al-jazeera the u.s. secretary of defense has called for a deadline to end the war in yemen saying it's time to replace combat with compromise james mattis says the u.n. envoy for yemen has told the saudi coalition and who the rebels to hold talks in sweden in the next thirty days. the united nations has aged saudi arabia to reveal

the web of. body the u.n. human rights experts calling for an independent international investigation into the journalist's matter inside the saudi consulate in istanbul four weeks ago the main problem for us globally in the world is impunity and in the case of custody we need first to to establish of that and to do a fact finding mission to make sure that we understand what really happened and that we made but i say we measure up what does a concrete proposal to the government of saudi out of you know they to invite us a group of five reporters and to do in the vista geisha on what happened and then to present to the global community it does will be the findings of all investigation that is a concrete proposal before posting. u.s. president donald trump has visited the scene of a shooting attack on a synagogue in pittsburgh where eleven people were killed but his visit has been

met with protests and jewish community leaders have written an open letter calling on trump to denounce white nationalism thousands of venezuelans are lined up on perilous northern border hoping to enter before a deadline for acquiring residency ends almost half a million venezuelans have crossed into peru escaping the economic crisis back home but the peruvian government is trying to curb the numbers saying it will only grant residency to those who enter by when say the u.s. is warning that the situation in venezuela is a threat to regional stability. indonesia's government has ordered inspections of all brand new boy and seven three seven jets on the sets of the same type involved in monday's crash one hundred eighty nine passengers and crew were killed in the second worst ed is aster in asia's aviation history deep sea divers are not searching for the line paints black box recorders to determine exactly what happened after it took off from the capital jakarta those are the headlines on

al-jazeera al-jazeera correspondent continues next. in baltimore maryland black people are three times more likely than white to be living in poverty. i want to know what that means for the people living. rick fontayne works for the city he grew up in a public housing project and has been helping disadvantaged youths in baltimore for over ten years. among the. housing projects is primarily black ok out of you know thousands of people maybe like ten white people that live in the projects. it's no resources you have a city you have a saw story it. someone you know they call the. ice of oh my house this jail this time it's offered one of mr rich toughest

soldiers. somebody's kid squeegee and they earn money that way but a lot of kids on they sell bottled waters and bottled drinks for a dollar i mean on the bottom yes thank you thank you. keep with the legal hassles are right and you know i'm a legal mess sometimes i just pull kids off corners i mentor them i help them get. rick takes me to the parking lot where de'monte howard a youth he mentored was shot dead just two months before. a lot of the drugs and activity happens right here and it's this parking lot and this is where unfortunately a lot of the homicides are robberies to please you see r.p. diesel baby that was the a monster his nickname his mother was struggling as a single mom three children by itself and he did the fastest thing to help her and that was get involved in drugs for a year he was just good enough to help his mom and some guys from another neighborhood came here to rob them and ended up killing

a really good kid old man always is trying to do better we got him. in wilberforce college and the day we were supposed to present him with his certificate to go to college he was he was murdered right here really sorry to hear he says as the president. was a boss we've been a man i miss my home boy it's good to be just. what would you like for this community all these kids take them up the trips and sprays more stuff that's all you know right here it's old. it was all of. those. were. a lot of. these kids feel like they're forced to do that to survive they're not doing it to be driving a mercedes in bentleys and things like that they're doing it because if i don't do this. people in these neighborhoods are not asking for anything but opportunity the

same playing field that the rest of america gets i don't. this is. what you need to see how you don so this is this is james to lose that. you know i always see how you know you know the thing that we're doing and how you know they've everybody feel so safe a passerby's they've been especially to the streets and now here i am i one of them time. i'm so sorry for your loss thank you so much thank you could appreciate. there were three hundred forty three homicides in baltimore in twenty seventeen more than ninety percent of these people were black. chan wallace is a baltimore photographer who uses her craft to combat racial stereotyping so i use

photography as a form of activism my black lives matter and this what we are this is what we are outside of the gaze of whiteness. this guy right here i see black men all the time but i see how the world continues to perpetuate that these moments moments like this don't happen sometimes i photograph a black man and i have the photograph printed ready give it to them they. now have the sound i went back to go give them a copy but you don't. weave and doors so much pain and have these moments where we didn't have anybody and it's you know but a lot of people tell me about those moments when i take their photograph and talk about our trauma talk about the injustices we go through what can i do what can white people do to kind of shift the way that they think or i think that for white people it starts with just simply caring about black people and envisioning more

equal society allies i don't think that an ally job is to go in and dictate and tell people what to do and give directions this is listen and take notes. she has arranged a photo shoot in the area of baltimore where she grew up. she photographs her brother does many cousin quoting in front of. two generations and we still live on the street. there's many quoted who have served time in prison one in three black men in the u.s. it's a felony conviction. over seven. i was forced to come out of this trying to. provide a way from. where we were forced into this we don't have. the right to tell you. the forces

on the street. you know bedrooms there for a fifth of our kids is. i'm not even a pussy. it was dark a bring my son out this community my family my whole family stuck in this community when you look back across the generations the advantages that white people have put in position for themselves and all black people in the end the disadvantaged as i might be was small and just because you're white you should never bet out there and to me. i don't think so but it's like him and then. his father it always was this event are so full of black person pieces very. true i did something about it but. we just want to force more some are the put a spotlight on us and give us a little bit of hope and then but i was determined what we will do what we don't weigh it out to some over so scott even scared to speak out because a surprise we portrayed him is as if we who would but we're not we so scarred that

we don't even want to speak out because we're afraid of the next person who look at . you guys are going to take this with me you know trying to transfer the message. i mean i came here to listen and to learn you know and it seems like such a small thing. just to hear these stories. this is not small because quality he got emotional and even my brother got emotional because they have people listening you know people really fight it down matter we don't really talk about it because it happens so much it's not news it's not new . quality i know he didn't want to say that stuff roll long time you've got kids. family you know and they all live in poverty it is the as still living in poverty

is this is not the dream for us. i later discovered that the continuing existence of the rich white neighborhoods and poor black neighborhoods in baltimore is not accidental but a legacy of decades of deliberate racial discrimination. in the mid one nine hundred thirty s. the u.s. government was encouraging people to buy their own homes by offering federal loans however most black people were systematically refused mortgages. in addition government and financial institutions true up maps disqualifying some areas for subsidies readline zones usually defined as neighborhoods where black people live. this deliberate denial of equal opportunities for black people to buy real estate is a major reason for the wealth gap between blacks and whites that exist today. my efforts to educate myself in america's hidden history lead me to two academics who

have spent years researching the racial wealth gap in america and the reasons for it hello i'm james. good nature person what does that inequality look like in the aftermath of the civil war blacks may have all the less than one person the american wealth. what's particularly striking and disturbing about that figure is that if we look at the comparable measure today it's about two percent so we have a wealth position for black americans today that in a relative is not very different from what it was at the end of slavery is there an unpaid debt that is still out to black people in america so yes the estimates can run as high as seventeen trillion dollars there was an opportunity to reverse the consequences of slavery instead the formerly enslaved folks never received the forty acres and

a mule that they were promised if that type of land reform it actually taken place it would have completely altered the trajectory of wealth inequality by race in the united states we got the destruction of black communities that had developed some measure of prosperity through white massacres that took place from the period of about eight hundred eighty through about nineteen forty. the midwestern community of greenwood in tulsa oklahoma was the most affluent black community in america with over three hundred black owned businesses known as black wall street. in main one nine hundred twenty one the whole thirty five block neighborhood was obliterated by a white mob triggered by a false rumor that a black man had raped a white girl homes businesses schools and churches were burned and bombed and over one hundred people died. while a massacre after another in

a sort of rolled across the country all of these riots where thousands of black people were killed if you study history you see that this is been a continuous. a continuous assault on black people yeah we we think there is a giant. and we think it needs to be met because i think it is a just response to america's history my family's. you know status and wealth has as has been has benefited from from their choice to enslave people the total number is staggering of whites only at least one black body you know would have at least half at least half up the population good white population i actually met recently the descent descendants of one of the people my family enslaved and found out that i had actually known this this woman

a stellar who's ninety years old now and most of my life is her full name. her name is. sorry i'm blanking on her last name stella. telling you know that she's many years your senior and yet you refer to her by her first name and. there it is right there i mean i don't mean any disrespect. to check. well apparently no one else in your family has referred to her by any other for were direct the yeah yeah no you're absolutely right i think it probably made both of us uncomfortable you know for you for you to call me out there. maybe maybe not maybe not so. good.