¡Colores!; 806; Blackdom; Roosevelt Boyer Jr. at Blackdom

Let me work with it. It's a real strong point. Just try to move off away from him. I got some of the things I wanted to do. It's lucky that you do this stuff. Did you have some water on your bucket? That was cool. I love going to places like this. Or are you an amateur archaeologist? Yeah, Ashwin, yeah. I am. When I was a kid, I used to come home and my mom would get mad because my aunt... She puts... I've got to put some milk on her. This is too much for you. I got it here, this. I got it when I was not on there at all. Yeah, I have two. She got it on us. Mm-hmm. What's she gonna have about it? This is a couple more questions. Huh? I just wanted to kind of get the well on the back of her in there a little bit. I'm gonna help you stand here and kind of talk to me for a second. Okay, and that everybody gets a part of their own history. You know, they go back.

I want to know, again, it's a little bit more kind of the same question we've already talked about. But why is it important for the average American to know what happened here? I would think that we'd like for the country to know that there were people who came out here with an idea of being free, okay, first in the first place. And then, by not having... In those days, there was no such thing as welfare. So you did it on your own, okay? You had to come out and blood sweat and tears is what got you where you want to go. And I think the country needs to know that before welfare, there were people who were making a statement or who were making their dreams come true by blood sweat and tears. So, I'm not still on camera right. I'm not an advocate of affirmative action myself.

I'm an advocate of having the opportunity. I'm just saying that I know of too many people who've taken advantage of it and it really didn't do what it was supposed to do. But I still think that the idea was okay and the fact that you were given an opportunity because there were a lot of doors that were closed. And affirmative action did open some doors. Even though it didn't do what it was supposed to do, it did open some doors for some people. I just wanted to throw that in. It's got nothing to do with black stuff. Definitely, definitely. But if you were going to talk to your grandfather right now, if you could meet him somehow, his ghost walks out of here and says, Hi, I'm your grandfather. What would you say to your grandfather right now? Well, I would probably want to know what Grandpa, you know, why did you even

have the idea of the audacity to come out here on this god of a second place and try to make a city. You know, make a town for blacks because I think you could have picked a more friendly place for friendly environs than what you did here. And yet he would, I don't know what he would say to me, but probably say to me that the government was allowing home standing here and the land was free. And you didn't have any money to buy anything anyway. So if you got the land, then all the money would go into developing it. But that's what I would want to know why he stopped here. You know, what made you stop here? Because having been out here before, his father would have known about the rear-brand river because he was at Fort Seldon. But why didn't he go on to the Sea of Valley? You know, I don't know.

That's one of the things I'd want to know. Well, let me assist then. If you were to meet your grandfather today and knowing the rich history, knowing his determination and knowing the legacy that he handed down to his descendants, what would you say to him? Today. Well, I would say that a lot of his teachings are still alive, but he didn't teach in vain. Although not everyone of his descendants took advantage of what Grandpa was saying. Some did, and they're successful today. Others didn't play the same game. Well, let me interrupt you right there. Let's finish this statement. I want you to repeat this statement. If you were to meet your grandfather, just finish this statement. Grandpa, I just want to tell you. Oh. Grandpa,

I just want to tell you that I'm thankful to you for your instilling in me, personally, the attitude that it can be done if you work at it. That's the main thing. Each individual, each descendant of his, had to make his own decision from what Grandpa was saying. But that was one of the things that I was inspired by, that if you worked at it, you could get it done. Okay. Come on. And that was, what was that up there? Did you think that was a blow-off or something? I would think so, yeah. It's about 39. Well, huh?

Where's that water? What's that water, huh? You were called by what time? You grabbed all the drills for the welds? Oh. It had to be. Wow. Wait a minute. It's a pump there. Hey, I want to go in the air. Isn't it? I want to go in the air. I want to go in the air. I want to go in the air. See, Grandpa had a habit later on marking the year on a lot of the stuff around. I don't see if I see anything here. He would mark it in the cement. But I don't see anything here. Do you remember what did he drill about time he drilled this weld? You know, I don't know.

It would have to be probably a couple of years after he got here because he didn't come out of it right away. That's when they discovered that somebody put down a little water and then they discovered, wow, water is pretty plentiful around here. But no, where are the other welds? Because they had to dry this thing up. I mean, it had to be a lot of them out here because... The drag still, well, I think is on the other side of the correction institute, actually. Oh, okay. And I don't know that's the only one that I saw in the map. Yeah. But in order for it to drop the water table, and it's got to be in a lot of wells. And I think there's probably a lot of these little pumps like this. Well, you know, we got some information from it. You didn't stop going. Okay, go ahead. What? What?

You want to help Grandpa? Yeah. The draw, the draw is very short on that, you know? Yeah, put your hands on it. You got to help Grandpa pump that. Okay, you got that, hey, got it? All right, all right. Because I'm thinking about a windmill. The draw on a windmill is about seven inches. So, that draw is about an inch. Look at me. So, what they had down there, I mean, it's gone anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.