Strong Island
- TV-MA
- Year:
- 2017
- 107 min
- 206 Views
1
Hello, it's Yance.
Hello, it's Demitri Jones
returning your phone call.
-Hi, Miss Jones. How are you?
-OK.
I am not sure if you remember my name,
or my brother's name.
He was a homicide victim,
back in 1992, when you were with the
Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.
-OK.
-His name was William Ford.
You worked on the case
with Stephen O'Brien
OK, what do you want to know?
I was calling to see if you were willing
to, within, you know,
your legal restrictions,
answer some of the questions
that have been,
sort of, plaguing me
for the last 22 years.
No. I'm not going to do that.
OK. Do you mind if I ask you why?
Because as a prosecutor,
everything that
happens in the Grand Jury
is confidential.
-So I'm not going to discuss it.
-Sure. Right. No.
I'm asking about the investigation.
Yeah, no, I'm not willing
to discuss any
with anybody.
-May I interview you by phone?
-No.
-OK, and...
-I don't want to discuss the case.
And you don't want to make any comment?
I do not want to make any comment.
-OK, Miss Jones. Thank you.
-Bye.
My son...
lying dead in a coffin,
with the most peaceful look on his face.
You, your sister...
And I remember thinking...
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"How are we gonna make it without him?
How will our life go on, without him?"
Even then,
I was saying,
"Wait until we get to court!
I said, "This is a young man who has never
been in trouble in his entire life.
Wait until we get to court."
So you were saying this
to yourself on the day of the funeral?
"Wait until we get to court.
This death is not going to be in vain."
I'm not surprised
that the case didn't go to trial.
I just want to know all the reasons why.
I'm not angry.
I'm also not willing to accept
that someone else gets to say
who William was.
And if you're uncomfortable
with me asking these questions,
you should probably get up and go.
All of the years that we were growing up,
if we went through a section,
or passed a section
that was predominantly white,
you ran.
That's when I started to realize
the economic difference.
OK, so these people weren't wealthy,
but their wealth was that they were white.
My father's name
I was two when my father died.
He had a severe asthma attack.
He was taken to the hospital.
There was a White waiting room,
and even though he was critically...
in respiratory difficulty,
he was made to wait.
And during that period
of time, he died.
Tell me the story of how
you met Dad. When did you meet Dad?
Well, let's not say,
"When did I meet him?"
When did I become aware of him?
What's the difference?
Because I saw him
when I was in the sixth grade,
and he was in the seventh grade.
I did not speak with him
until October of 1958.
I was a sophomore,
and he was a junior.
And... where we lived,
in Charleston, South Carolina,
we always had a Coronation Ball
at County Hall.
Your father came over.
He asked me for a dance,
and he asked me that night
if I would be his girl.
I tried to be cool,
and let a few seconds pass
before I said, "Yes!"
I didn't say yes, I said,
"Yeah, I guess so."
You know?
But I was jumping for joy inside.
Because I had loved this
man from afar
since I was in sixth grade.
We got married
July 10th, 1965.
Now,
I think that my husband...
was a gorgeous man, OK?
He was handsome.
We moved to New York.
I absolutely loved it.
We found an apartment in Brooklyn.
I enjoyed it immensely.
It was the kind of apartment building
that had a lot of old Jewish ladies
who lived there.
And they would line up
in front of the window
in the afternoon, and they'd sit there.
They were wonderful.
I remember coming home one day,
and one of them said,
"It looks as if
you're going to have a baby!"
I said, "Oh, my goodness,
I was elated, you know.
And when I sang he would get quiet,
and when I stopped,
he would move a little.
And if I didn't start right back up,
his little feet and hands would be moving.
William was born in 1967.
"That boy's gonna be so spoiled."
He was. He was.
I made an "A"
on the national teachers exam.
I loved teaching.
I loved it.
Because I knew what being educated
had done for my sisters and me.
And I also knew the struggle.
My mom stripped tobacco for a living,
OK?
She left school in the fourth grade,
and went to work.
I helped her learn how to read.
I think she had no shame with me,
because I was the youngest.
And I was proud
that I could help her
read and write.
My mother started
out her career
in New York City as an
English teacher,
and worked her way up to
become Principal
of Thomas Jefferson
High School
in East New York.
After 13 years there,
she opened a school
for girls and women at Rikers,
the jail that sits in...
essentially at the end of the runway
at LaGuardia Airport.
She named it Rosewood,
and she developed programs
that helped women leave prison
with skills,
so that they would have options
when they got out of prison.
And my father just believed
in my mother's ability to do anything.
Your father worked
at Andrew Geller's.
Fabulous shoes.
Fantastic, beautiful shoes,
and I loved them.
He wanted to be a draftsman.
He took the test for the
Transit Authority
to become a motorman...
but he could still go to school.
Then you were born.
When Lauren was born,
he was overjoyed.
He was overjoyed.
But as you guys grew,
you were so rambunctious.
We were looking for an apartment.
We looked in Brooklyn.
Nothing that we found
did your father like.
He did not like anything that we found.
I must not have spoken to him
for a month, OK?
I would put pillows
in the middle of the bed,
because it meant that
we had to keep looking,
and at the time, I did not know
how dead set he was
on moving to Long Island.
which ran on a loop through
some of the
toughest neighborhoods
in the city.
From his motorman's
cabin, he saw a
very different New York
than my mother.
He saw poverty, and crime,
and violence,
My father was not a fearful man.
He was a realist.
of the Jim Crow South in one piece,
and he didn't want to put
his family or our future at risk.
We came out one Saturday,
and met Sam McCollough.
Nice, you know. He lived in the community.
He was the agent for the company
that bought this land
and built the houses.
I was told later
that they wanted to attract...
people who were employed
by the city, you know,
whom they thought could afford the homes.
A lot of... African Americans
were moving out to Long Island.
Civil servants, like bus drivers,
police officers, correction officers...
and they would put them in pockets,
or neighborhoods in the different towns.
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"Strong Island" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 Oct. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/strong_island_19011>.
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