like the chance to win a universal parks & resorts trip to hollywood or orlando to attend halloween horror nights. or xfinity rewards members, get the inside scoop on halloween kills. just say watch with into your voice remote for an exclusive live stream with jamie lee curtis. a q&a with me! join for free on the xfinity app. our thanks your rewards. before the break we had a discussion about the new peacock original film civil war which centers around the teaching of that in american classrooms which got me fired up so i decided to explore the topic first hand with people who know the topic well for velshi across america. i was joined by six locals and
you re going to be black. so those of us in mississippi who know our history and know what it has been, what it could be, we re happy to still be here to make that vision real, but if you don t know your history, and you don t understand, you are doomed to repeat it or be a victim of it. taylor, you and timothy are of a different generation. do you think you ve got the real story? absolutely not. wow. i can remember every year going to school when it got to black history month or when we got the textbooks to the slavery and civil war section we hear about different confederate soldiers and general every single year, but then we get to black history month and you hear about rosa park, malcolm x and martin luther king every single year for 12 years as if they were the only three, you know, black
those are the things we want to bring in the classroom to make sure students, my students, our students understand. all students that the correct history is the history that is actually written primarily from south carolina and mississippi and you will find african-americans will understand history not from the news or from actual books and reading and research. rachel, the elephant in the room here. you are white. you are tackling an issue that largely affects black people to this day in this country. how did this play out? i would take issue with that statement. i think this is an issue that affects all americans. this is the time to think about the history that is their history. while i was making the film and i made several films. this is the only film i made in my country and only time i have
we talked about how misconceptions have affected generations that followed. here s part of that conversation. you know, you ask these guys about what it means to be a southerner, and i think for a lot of kind of mainstream, particularly white middle class america when they think about southerners, they think about white southerner, right? if we understand a place like mississippi in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, the majority of the population was african-american, and they immediately began exploring the mythology around what it meant to be black in the south, what it meant to be an enslaved person, and that was the only proper treatment for african-americans and that gets exploded immediately and for the majority of the population in mississippi they won the civil war. it was a victory for freedom and emancipation, and it really takes a white supremacist revolution to institute the system of power that would become jim crow to overthrow
been consistently questioned of what gives you the right to make this movie. i think i have a chip on my shoulder. i m not questioning why, it is a great film with great sensitivity. i believe it is time for white people to own the issue. the issue of race in america and issue of racism in america is a white problem. white people need to engage with it and engage in african-american history as american history. this is our story. a huge theme woven through the film is preserving a certain part of history that rachel is making here. the concept of who we value as american heros. i want to play something you said in the film. we take for granted the lives lost. who is brave to try the system?