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Amanpour
Interview with "Ethel Kennedy" Author Kerry Kennedy; Interview with "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" Director David Greaves; Interview with "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" Producer Liani Greaves. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired October 16, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
As Trump's Washington makeover bulldozes parts of American history, a rare look at one of the families who helped shape it. I speak to Kerry Kennedy
about her new biography, her parents, Robert and Ethel, and her MAGA brother, RFK Jr.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, come on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- the fight to save Haiti's streets from armed gangs. Nick Paton Walsh goes inside with the forces trying to restore order in a
country on the brink of collapse.
Also, ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the Renaissance period was a period through which I lived.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- one night, four cameras, and a cocktail party full of artists from the Harlem Renaissance. Filmmakers David and Liane Greaves take
audiences back to a fateful gathering in 1972 in their new documentary, "Once Upon a Time in Harlem."
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
The Oval Office, adorned in gold, the Rose Garden, paved over, and the East Wing reduced to rubble. While presidents have come and gone, the White
House has endured as a symbol of American history and tradition. Well, not anymore. President Trump's new vision for Washington now includes
threatening to take a wrecking ball also to the Kennedy Center, a memorial to the slain JFK.
My first guest, Kerry Kennedy, is doing what she can to preserve the family legacy. She is JFK's niece, and she's the daughter of Robert Kennedy,
attorney general, senator, civil rights partner to Martin Luther King, and a presidential candidate himself when he was also assassinated in 1968, a
few short months after Dr. King. At his side throughout, his wife, Ethel.
Now, Kerry chronicles her mother's life and her work in a new biography, "Ethel Kennedy." I spoke to Kerry about all this rich history and much more
when she joined me from New York.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Kerry Kennedy, welcome to the program.
KERRY KENNEDY, AUTHOR, "ETHEL KENNEDY": Great to be with you, as always.
AMANPOUR: You've written this amazing book on your mother, and I'm going to say the actual title. It's "The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy of
Ethel Kennedy." Now, obviously, you're a woman who loves her mother, but what is it that you want the world to know about your mother's role and
what she did for America and for the world?
KENNEDY: You know, I think this is an amazing story. It's a story of rags to riches. It's this incredibly beautiful love story with my father. And
it's a story of a woman who had 10 children, was pregnant with her 11th, was standing next to her husband when a madman came out and shot five
people and killed my father and killed her husband in her arms. And what do you do with that trauma?
She got up the next day and she went to work and she raised her 11 children, her 11 traumatized children, on her own. She became one of the
most empowered women of her generation. And then she became this extraordinary human rights activist. And I think her survival was really
through her faith and her service. And I think that that's the lesson, that we need to find our own sense of spirituality and faith, if we can find it.
And also, we need to serve one another, especially in this time when our country is in so much trouble.
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, you mentioned that, and I'm going to ask you a little bit about the trouble you find your country in at the moment. But
first, let me ask you about the trauma. I mean, obviously, it was absolutely the most awful thing anybody can live through, and for you
children as well. And your mom, as you said, was pregnant.
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She later delivered your youngest sister Rory. And I just cannot imagine how that must have been for you, or do you remember the trauma afterwards?
KENNEDY: Yes. I mean, the way I found out that my father was killed is, I had gone to, I was eight years old. I was with him that day. And I went
back to my hotel room, went to sleep, woke up the next morning to watch Bugs Bunny, sat on the floor cross-legged, and turned on my TV, and then
the newsflash came across.
You know, I was alone in a hotel room watching that. It was really, really hard. And then the flood of attention and the seeing the scene again and
again and again, never able to watch TV without that maybe coming up was really hard. And I think all of us experienced and continue to experience
PTSD. Of course, that wasn't a word at the time. But it Kerrys with us to this day.
I mean, in a lot of ways, I think it made us as a family more attached to one another, more sensitive to one another, but also really damaged in
profound ways that are still with us.
AMANPOUR: Yes. I'm just listening to you. I mean, in full disclosure, I have known you since college. I know many members of your family. I was
very close to President Kennedy's children, John and Caroline, and so I've watched how you all handled this over the decades.
And I wanted you to put in your words or your mother's words what service to the country meant, how you kept doing that and kept basically the faith
with both Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy's incredible examples and legacy.
KENNEDY: Well, you know, both of those men believed that one person could make a difference and that each of us should try. And they challenged the
next generation to be involved in service and in government. And that's what my mother spent our childhood doing and the rest of her life doing.
She had that voice in her head that all of us have that says, you're not smart enough, you don't have the right degree, you don't, you've never been
elected to an office, you can't do this. But she ignored that voice. And that's what we all have to do now.
She went and she'd call me up and say, Kerry, there's a protest at the Chinese embassy, want to go? And she'd come to my house and we'd take my
twins and put them in the back of the car and go to the Chinese embassy or to the U.S. Capitol on behalf of child laborers in India or wherever it
was. So, that's who she was through and through. If there was a way that she could make a difference, she was all in.
AMANPOUR: Well, listen, I knew her as a pretty fierce lady too, so this is all resonating. But let me ask you, I want to ask you because many of your
siblings and of your cousins have actually run for office, believing in the Kennedy mantra of service to the nation. Your mom had a pretty difficult
relationship, particularly in light of what you say, the trauma, clearly, after your father was assassinated. Apparently, she had a difficult
relationship with your brother, Robert Kennedy Jr., your older brother.
Can you describe a little bit about how that dialogue went on between you and your mother or your mother and your siblings about her fears and
concerns?
KENNEDY: She did not agree with Bobby on vaccine. She was vaccinated herself. She vaccinated all of her children. She got vaccinated during
COVID. And she was explicit with Bobby about that. And then when Bobby announced that he was running for president, she talked to Bobby about it
and she called President Biden and said, you know, there are 33 Kennedys in that generation and they're all for you and I'm for you and endorsing you
and we love you, Mr. President.
So, I think that she had a comfort level with being able to say, I love you, I disagree with you. And that's the way she went through life.
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AMANPOUR: And was she aware that Bobby endorsed Trump? And what would she have said? And what do you think about that?
KENNEDY: You know, well, I think that Bobby's endorsement of Trump is anathema to everything that we've ever been taught as a family about how to
conduct oneself in public life. I think that this is the most corrupt administration in history. And I think that it's been extremely painful to
the American people.
We've pulled out of the commitments we've made around the world from the United Nations programs and human rights programs, the International
Criminal Court. And he has been terrible, especially to the press, and undermining democracy. So, I could go on and on about the Trump
administration and the pain that he's caused to the American people and to the people around the world.
I don't understand how Bobby said to himself that this is OK to do. I don't understand that, frankly. But that's the path he's on. And I think for so
many families, Christiane, in the United States, they're in this position of having a split, of people going one way or the other politically. And we
need to continue to see the dignity in one another and to find in our hearts a way to love people with whom we disagree.
AMANPOUR: I want to revert to the human rights work and the civil rights work that your father did and that really laid the ground for the creation
of the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Foundation. And there was an historic moment during the campaign that I think everybody who was alive at
the time and anybody who's read about it remembers.
When RFK, your father, landed in Indianapolis in 1968, I guess he was on the campaign trail, he was informed that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been
shot in Memphis. And your father chose to go out and address the city's largest black neighborhood that very night, despite having been urged and
warned by city officials that it was too dangerous, that he'd be in harm's way. I think your mother was there with him when he did that.
And I find that one of the most extraordinary pieces of public peacemaking and conciliation in recent history. And I wonder what it took to defy all
those warnings on that incredible dangerous night to go out there and try to talk to people who were so desperately aggrieved.
KENNEDY: Yes. You know, the mayor at the time, Richard Lugar, said you can't go there and I won't even allow my police to go with you if you do go
because it's too dangerous. But that's not how my father felt. My father had worked with black communities across the country. Richard Lugar had
literally never even been to the largest black neighborhood in his city. Daddy knew that he had a trusting relationship with the people there who,
after all, had been waiting for hours to hear him speak. And that rally was organized by Congressman John Lewis, the great civil rights leader.
And so, Daddy went and he said, what we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not violence and
lawlessness, but love and compassion and understanding of those who suffer in our country, whether they be white or they be black.
And I think, Christiane, this is also the lesson for the book. Our country is in flames today. Don't just turn off the TV because it's too emotional
to watch. Don't turn it off or don't watch it and say, what am I going to do? Get out there and do something. Join a protest. Go and vote. Get all
your friends to vote. Take action. You are not a victim. You're a hero. We need you to help us bring back our democracy and bring back our country.
AMANPOUR: Very powerful, Kerry. I want to just also ask you about some very important things in your family's legacy. First of all, the Kennedy
Center. And let's just remind everybody that the Kennedy Center was not built by John F. Kennedy. He and his predecessor, President Eisenhower --
or President Eisenhower was in office at the time, started this fundraising effort to bring a place for the performing arts in Washington. Later, after
the assassination, it was named for President Kennedy. But this is what he said about the importance of arts to any democracy. Take a listen.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN F. KENNEDY, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and spirit, which finds its greatest
flowering in the free society. Thus, in our fulfillment of these responsibilities towards the art lie our unique achievement as a free
society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, extolling obvious virtues of freedom and art at the height of the Soviet Union and the Cold War confrontation. So, when you see this
bipartisan effort now kind of under attack by the current president of the United States, complete with putting his own name on it, what do you think?
What do you think is the future of the Kennedy Center?
KENNEDY: Well, first of all, I think, you know, this is the memorial created by the United States Congress to a slain president. So, putting
Trump's name on it would be like renaming the Washington Monument to the Trump Washington Monument or the Trump Lincoln Memorial or the Trump Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier.
So, President Trump, do your job. Focus on the people's pain and the work that you're supposed to do in the Oval Office and not on the Kennedy
Center. That's not your job.
AMANPOUR: How do you think that would have played out if this was happening when Ethel Kennedy was still alive, the destruction of all this
history?
KENNEDY: You know, I think she'd be there with the pit backs at the Kennedy Center taking its name off the wall. I mean, you know, she was a
woman of action and that's the way she wrote.
AMANPOUR: It's a really, really great read and it's really good to talk to you. Thank you so much, Kerry, for your conversation --
KENNEDY: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: -- and this book about your mother, "Ethel Kennedy."
KENNEDY: Thank you, Christiane. And then let me just also say thank you for your service, for your friendship, but also your service as a
journalist and to all journalists at these very, very difficult times. I appreciate it.
AMANPOUR: Thank you. We appreciate that. On behalf of all the journalists, I can just say we appreciate it because it's very difficult times. Thank
you, Kerry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up, a nation engulfed in violence. Nick Paton Walsh visits the front lines of the fight against Haiti's armed gangs. That's
after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Every year the violence and crises in Haiti are only getting worse. More than 5,700 people have been killed or injured so far this year
as armed gangs tighten their grip on the country. And now, the first elections in a decade have been postponed indefinitely. Nick Paton Walsh
joins some of the operations which are trying to curb the unrest, including a controversial force led by Erik Prince and his private security company.
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The following video does contain material that some people may find disturbing
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Haiti's spiral downwards so brutal and stifling, any fix will do to curb the gang's power, born of rape, murder, even mutilation. Haiti's
government has turned to new technology and skills with a checkered past. Private security tycoon, Erik Prince.
ERIK PRINCE, FOUNDER, VECTUS GLOBAL: They are just flat-out evil criminals, and the best place for them is in the ground.
WALSH (voice-over): The decline so rapid, the descent to hell here so dizzying, that success is both hard to measure and reach.
Gangs now control so much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the fight against them has spread to the city's outskirts. This is rural hillside Kenscoff,
into which the gangs swept months ago.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We are in misery. Kenscoff is in misery. The bandits killed our families. Our kids. We had to run away from
home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): They killed many people. Many, many, many. Friends, relatives.
WALSH (voice-over): The gangs were pushed out but stormed back in again, killing and kidnapping dozens of locals in revenge. The police are clearing
them out again.
We join police during a day's long advance to reclaim tiny remote villages, some faces blurred for their security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The guys are shooting. We cannot stay here. We are exposed.
WALSH (voice-over): The mist sweeps in, and in seconds, everything feels much closer. As we move in with the police, the gangs use the fog and hills
to keep shooting.
WALSH: You can see that debris barrier there, I mean, another way the gangs slow the police down. Being here, about seven or eight shots have
kind of flown over us. We've heard the crack. It's a sign that the gangs are still really close by and don't want the police to ever feel
comfortable down here. Oh, there's another one.
WALSH (voice-over): More barricades lie ahead, locals eager on the road to get back to homes they've not seen for two years. The barricades dismantled
and burned so the gangs can't return and remake them.
WALSH: It is an extraordinary scene of locals just flooding in to kind of reclaim their own streets after the gangs have been pushed out.
WALSH (voice-over): A ritual praising the heavens, overshadowed by ruin.
PHILIPPE, POLICE COMMANDER (through translator): The gangs leave their youngest members behind while they run away.
WALSH (voice-over): And soon, police tell the locals it is time to leave again in case the gang comes back to wreak vengeance on them
Each room, each muddy road must be slowly cleared. And as they push on up the hill, their new foreign-donated armor is not the only outside help
they're getting. Hours earlier, two helicopters used the pause in the rain to land a police SWAT team in the hilltops. The helicopters are part of
Erik Prince's operation here, bringing new capabilities and the experience of foreign ex-special forces, but not for free.
And these are the first pictures of Prince's private security fighters in Haiti who led the push with specialized Haitian police in what's called the
task force.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hear a lot of thing about you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is -- see up here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a good security position, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see everything.
WALSH (voice-over): Nobody has seen their operations in Haiti before, and this drone footage shows gang members fleeing. There's still a fight here
as the police settle in to try and hold the area. Drones watching over them and striking targets around.
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Erik Prince made his name and millions in Iraq with Blackwater, sullied and reprimanded over civilian casualties there. His ties to Blackwater long
severed, he is now selling a new idea, that private security, mercenaries to their detractors can tackle security or gang problems for failing states
that can't.
PRINCE: Yes, that's a bad city, right. That's the bad part right there.
WALSH: Yes.
WALSH (voice-over): He was first sent to Haiti as a Navy SEAL 32 years ago, and now he gave CNN his first interview and access to his operation
here.
PRINCE: When we started, a police truck like the one we rode in here on, pretty much one of those was lost every week. Attacked, ambushed, burned,
the occupants slaughtered, butchered, that's done now, because there's much better response, quicker air support, drones, whatever, that prevents the
police from being overmatched. That's really why we're here.
WALSH (voice-over): Over 2,000 drone strikes on varied targets in the past year, a task force source said. Here, on what they said, was a gang Molotov
cocktail factory. Prince wouldn't reveal his annual fee of likely tens of millions of dollars, but on top of that, he gets a tenth of any new customs
revenue generated if his LENA operation ends smuggling dozens of illegal border crossings.
WALSH: Did you put a number on what your contract is worth in terms of what the Haitian government pay you?
PRINCE: The previous U.N. force is that our cost is one-sixth of what their annual camp cost was. So, it's a fraction of a fraction of a
fraction.
WALSH (voice-over): He had aimed to free up key roads within a year here, but hasn't. Although the U.N. has said this year has seen the gang spread
in the capital halted, even reversed.
WALSH: And how do you just answer critics who say that you're operating outside of what people might describe as international norms? How do you
respond to that?
PRINCE: I would welcome all those critics to come and walk through the rough neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince for a week or a day and see how long
they last. And maybe their academic assumptions would be renewed.
WALSH: You haven't killed any major gang leaders yet. Have there been challenges in some of the operations you're doing? Is not killing top
leaders part of your strategy?
PRINCE: Look, insurgencies are not defeated by taking out just leadership. I know there's been obsession of that in the United States, but wars are
won by taking significant numbers of enemy manpower off the battlefield. We're in the process of doing that and enabling sovereignty to resume.
Our goals for success are that people can leave from their home, go to their place of work and not be murdered, raped, robbed, extorted by gang
members at multiple steps away, because that's how it is now.
WALSH (voice-over): To grasp the enormity of the collapse and daily trauma, we head to the once vibrant downtown of the capital, so long gang-
held, the swathes of it are now overgrown, as though nature is tired of the violence and wants to take back control. We patrol at dawn, but the new
U.N.-mandated gang suppression force hears soldiers from Chad, very far from home and still very far from suppressing the gangs, whose territory is
marked with these ribbons and barricades.
First light, when those who live under the gangs make their daily break for it, to head out to the rest of the world, on foot through rivers of sewage
and trash, to reach work or food. A body lies abandoned in the road, likely dump there overnight. We go back with them at dusk to see it all happen
again for the home trip.
WALSH: Talk about how desperate life must be here, to attempt this in the daylight must simply be terrifying. It's eerie being here inside an armored
personnel carrier, but they're risking it out on the street here in the dark. Many of them carrying, it looks like food for their homes, things
back into gang-held areas. Some of them barefoot.
WALSH (voice-over): The Chadians are often limited in what they can do, as their force is so far only a third of the size it's meant to be. They are
the 15th international mission to try and solve Haiti's problems. Even the city's port is surrounded by gangs who tax every truck that goes in or out.
This U.N.-backed force, Prince and the police, urgently want to break the gang's stranglehold on here, as well as Haiti's key arterial roads, and
this, the airport.
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WALSH: Stunning, really. This was just the lifeblood of Haiti, its main airport, and utterly deserted, barely used. Basically, because the gangs
are about 25 meters on the other side of its northern wall. They can shoot at anything that tries to land.
WALSH (voice-over): The hills, the roads and downtown, all gang-ridden. We come here to see how the space for life is shrinking. 1.5 million displaced
from their homes into sweltering catacombs like this.
WALSH: But here was already pretty dense, pretty hard to live in, really, before the violence around Kenskoff. Send people into the city Centre just
to find anywhere they could try and get shelter.
LUCKSON ALFREZIN, KENSCOFF REFUGEE (through translator): I have lost everything. We lost family, uncles, cousins, my auntie. They've been hacked
to death. We did not find the bodies. The cattle that we kept, the bandits took them, wasted them, ate them. Leavins us with nothing. You are like a
car with no lights on. You are living buy you don't see why. You are already dead.
WALSH (voice-over): They fled Kenskoff, carrying nothing but stories of horror.
SOPHONIE MARTIAL, KENSCOFF REFUGEE (through translator): The men killed my dad. He died. They peppered him with bullets. We tried everything to get
his body but couldn't. They took him and burnt him. All the sacrifice my dad did for me, but his life ended just like that?
WALSH (voice-over): To see how life in a gang-held area means not only dread and isolation, but also hunger and even drones, we join a U.N. WFP
food distribution convoy permitted by the gangs, who have to let people eat. It is a lifeline in a place where life is always on the line. But even
the gangs try to curb the chaos and anger.
ETIENNE, KRACHE DIFE GANG (through translator): We are very happy when our people get food. You know what I mean? When it happens like this, it's good
for us. Because we can't feed the people on our own. The drones, oh, drones are pushing us out of the neighborhood.
WALSH (voice-over): Hunger and grief, common currency.
MARIC-SONNY MONTILUS, LOCAL RESIDENT (through translator): I will share my food with those who don't have any. I have high blood pressure. I had a
stroke. Problems, everything. My daughter died. My daughter, she died. My daughter. Then I have my niece. She was killed by a stray bullet.
WALSH (voice-over): The local gang leader, Julio, turns up with a message for Erik Prince.
JULIO, KRACHE DIFE GANG: Our biggest threat is the Erik Prince's force. The solution, Erik Prince could leave tomorrow. Go back to his country
tomorrow. Going back to his place, there would be a need for peace. And what would force us to live alongside our own National Police. Only
dialogue, only peace. We, armed men, need peace too. Imagine, I have a wife and kids.
WALSH (voice-over): But it is clear, the gangs are not men of peace. We meet two children who worked for other gangs who made them murder and
mutilate, atrocities that are well documented.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They would make us kill people for them. They kidnapped people who they brought to me to kill. I did not take
any pleasure because it was a bad thing. I would tell them that I don't want to. They would force me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I killed three people. I feel guilt. Every time I think about it, I cry. These people could have been my
family. I did not want to do it. But if I did not, I would be killed in their places. When they would hack the person, they would grab the heart
and eat it.
WALSH (voice-over): As the conflict intensifies, over half of the 5,700 dead or injured this year have been hit during anti-gang operations, says
the U.N. Drone strikes often seem targeted, like this one aiming for gang leader Vitellon (ph). But rights workers say civilians are often hit by the
blasts. And although data is patchy, the U.N. have reported over 80 dead so far.
ROSY AUGUSTE DUCENA, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER (through translator): There is no gang loader who has boon hit, at least according to the information we
have, to have been hit by kamikaze drones. None. The collateral damage was enormous. You know, as for the mercenaries, in reality well, first of all,
we don't notice them. We don't know what they do and we know they're very costly because it's still our taxes that pay them and we don't see the
results. So, we think, at least up to now, that they are useless.
[13:35:00]
WALSH (voice-over): One horrific incident in September last year missed a gang leader, but killed eight children, including this woman's six-year-old
daughter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, DRONE STRIKE WITNESS (through translator): Everybody started running and screaming. A drone had fallen behind the square where
the gang leader was having the birthday party at the soccer field. A place where there is always a lot of kids. When I rushed to see, the drone had
fallen across from my friend's house. I found my daughter there, dead on the ground. Many kids died. The house where it fell, the roof flew off far
away. The walls are peppered with holes.
WALSH (voice-over): Another January drone strike killed this man's son.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE, DRONE STRIKE WITNESS (through translator): He was selling juices to make ends meet. As I was heading down, I heard people
screaming. When I got to where he should have been, I did not see him. Where was he? I left and then came back. When I looked, I saw him on the
ground. His cart was crushed on one side. Destroyed. And he was on the ground. I saw him and then I left. Because you can't show the gangs any
opinion about what happened. Later, I saw him again, when I came for the funeral. I couldn't say or do anything.
WALSH (voice-over): Most we spoke to blamed the gangs for bringing the strikes upon them. Prince declined to comment on specific cases.
PRINCE: We run dozens of hours of surveillance in an area before we do anything there. And a patrol, a raid, or certainly a drone strike. So, it's
not impossible that we have an accident, but we do very, very, very difficult diligence on making sure that doesn't happen.
WALSH (voice-over): The contrasts are painful. The endless beauty here swamped in relentless suffering. Extreme gang violence born of poverty and
terror, now confronted by the means and mercilessness of the private sector. Promising a quick fix at a price that's still out of reach.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Stay with CNN. We'll be right back after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Let's now go back in time to one night in 1972 when a pioneering documentarian invited artists and intellectuals to a dinner party. The aim
was to film their reflections on the cultural movement that they had created half a century earlier, known as the Harlem Renaissance. It was
when an influx of African-Americans in the New York neighborhood prompted an explosion of art, music and literature celebrating their heritage.
William Greaves' project was never finished and the footage was largely unseen until now.
[13:40:00]
Following his death, his son David and granddaughter Liani made it their mission to bring it to the big screen. The result is "Once Upon a Time in
Harlem." And it premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Here's part of the trailer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For the first time, we were aware of so many creative people who were black.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And all of them were aiming at the same thing, the struggle of the negro, the rise of the negro.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: David and Liani Greaves speak to Michel Martin about why America must remember the luminaries of black history now more than ever.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Liani Greaves, David Greaves, thank you both so much for joining us.
DAVID GREAVES, DIRECTOR, "ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM": Thank you for having us.
LIANI GREAVES, PRODUCER, "ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM": Thank you.
MARTIN: David Greaves, I'm going to start with you. Before we get into that extraordinary afternoon in 1972, would you just tell us about your
father, William Greaves. What brought him to film and what gave him the idea to make this film?
D. GREAVES: Well, what brought him to film was wanting to tell the African-American experience through African-American eyes, if you will. And
that he found that he couldn't do that working in front of the camera. So, he wanted to do that from behind the camera.
So, that brought him to the whole filmmaking experience, wanting to tell that story. And then what brought him to this particular film is his
growing up in the Harlem Renaissance, in the shadow of these luminaries. He had known them. He had taken in their creativity, if you will. And he
wanted to make sure that the people of the future, that is now, would see those folks and see as close as possible that experience of the Harlem
Renaissance. And wanted those folks in that era not to be forgotten and to be presented from primary sources. And who could give a real telling of the
Harlem Renaissance story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Zora had a little apartment on 66th Street. And it was a beautiful thing to go down to Zora's place and sort of expound your
literary ideas. You know, they can be very important to you when they're yours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN: So, Liani, I'm going to go to you. You are William Greaves' granddaughter. Did you know about this project or what did you know?
L. GREAVES: Yes, I did know about the project. I mean, I learned about the project probably in my teens. It always been this sort of almost lore in
our family that there was this very important footage that my grandfather had of the Harlem Renaissance and the important people that were at this
party. So, this had always been a thing that I knew.
And then, of course, my grandfather came back to the film throughout the '80s and the '90s and the early 2000s. And so, I certainly saw him working
on the film during the 2000s, for example.
MARTIN: What did you know about the Harlem Renaissance?
L. GREAVES: I knew about the Harlem Renaissance and its influence on him as a -- you know, my grandfather was sort of the quintessential, I guess, a
Renaissance man. He was a writer and a poet and, you know, before an actor, before he became a filmmaker, a dancer. So, all of that was very alive in
me in terms of our history.
I kind of knew, you know, the names that we do know, right? Like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. I knew those names. Aaron Douglas. I knew
Romare Bearden's name. But several of the people in the film I didn't -- I wasn't aware of. And also, the importance of their roles.
MARTIN: So, Mr. Greaves, you were behind the camera in Duke Ellington's townhouse that day.
D. GREAVES: Yes.
MARTIN: I mean, I can't even wrap my head around that guest list. I mean, it's almost like a mythical experience that all these people were in one
room. I mean, you're talking about musicians, Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, photographer James Van Der Zee. And there are stories told about what the
factors were that led Harlem to be the place where this happened.
D. GREAVES: Everyone brought something. Africa brought something. The islands, West Indian islands brought something. The Western, those of us
who came from the West brought something.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Many of our successful people came from the West Indies. Many of them came already well educated and became our doctors, our
lawyers, our druggists, our creative writer.
[13:45:00]
RICHARD B. MOORE, BOOKSELLER/PROMINENT SOCIALIST: As a result of the economic development and the political development, there was a ferment
which finally brought us the artistic development. A number of people started to come to Harlem because Harlem became known as the Mecca of the
new negro.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN: Did you have a sense of that there in the room? Did that feel very present there then, or did it feel even then that it was something in the
past?
D. GREAVES: Actually, at that point, it was something that was happening then, you know. It was not something that I was thinking of in terms of,
gee, these folks had come together. It was only after looking at the footage that you realize that all of these folks with their intellectual
energy and they're -- you know, they were seekers of themselves and of intellectual development. They all came to this Mecca, if you will, as it's
called, the Mecca of the, quote, "New Negro."
And being seekers, as they were, they came to the library. That's where they began to interact, or at least a number of them began to interact,
circling around the librarians who are the unsung heroes of history.
MARTIN: You know, we often think sometimes of artists as being in competition with each other, or the creatives being sort of -- but they
were all -- it was almost like they were all realized that they were part of something bigger than themselves, if that makes sense.
L. GREAVES: Yes. You know, it's just dawned on me quite recently that they were practicing freedom for the first time in a generation, really, a lot
of them. You know, they're -- in this generation, many of their parents were slaves. Eubie Blake talks about that.
And so, freedom was this new, wonderful practice. And so, was this, you know, artistic freedom. And they were just -- you know, they were young,
and they were happy to be with each other.
MARTIN: And, Mr. Greaves, the gathering, as we said, captures some surprisingly sharp disagreements.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you doing? I'm rotary calling him a Negro artist.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm calling him an artist, period. If you want, if it boosts your ego to say Negro, fine. If it boosts it to say black, fine. But
before anything, he is an artist.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Negro boosts no egos. Negro is a debasing, degrading term.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is your opinion. And Aaron Douglas is an Afro- American artist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
D. GREAVES: Well, you know, there were sharp disagreements, but there were civil disagreements. And what was interesting was that how those
disagreements that they were having, whether it was about straight socialism or Negroology, if it was about how do we call ourselves black,
white, negro, et cetera. They were also -- so, those disagreements and those conversations are happening now. And so, that was very interesting.
And that also, you take Lee Whipper, who his mother was a doctor and his father was a lawyer. That's about as middle class as you could get in the
black community. They came down from the north and did that, if you will, sort of challenging of the establishment down in the south.
So, the film shows that there was, this was not a monolith of folks. They had different thoughts. They had different backgrounds. And yet they were
able to come together. And as Mr. Hardy from the UNIA, the United Negro Improvement Association, as he says at the end of the film, they were
traveling on different roads, but they all were going to the same goal. And I think that's what kept it as a very civil relationship, even though they
could disagree, but they were all moving in the same direction.
MARTIN: Then you see, you know, I think it was maybe Richard Bruce Nugent, who is an artist, by the way, hold on here. And then also seeing some of
the women then speak up and say, excuse me, what we're not talking about here are the contributions of many of the women. And that was like, wow,
you know, even then they were having those conversations.
So, Liani, how did you all finally bring this film to fruition so that we can all experience it?
[13:50:00]
L. GREAVES: Well, my grandmother had gotten a grant to restore the footage. So, her initially, Louise Archambault Greaves, my grandmother, was
sort of working to restore all six. There were 60,000 feet of film that were that was in storage. And she was working to have that restored and
then make it available on the public archive, a public facing archive that people could study from and learn from. So, that was initially what she was
working towards.
And then she passed away in 2023. We sort of, you know, we got everything right. The legacy kind of fell here. And as we were looking at it, we kept
thinking that, you know, we should be making a film. We should make this film, make this into a film first. And we still -- you know, part of our --
important part of our mandate is to create that public facing archive. So, that's still happening right now. That's we're working on that. But we
decided to make the film. And so, we started working on that in 2023, the actual film.
MARTIN: I was just wondering what it was like for you, though, all these years, knowing that there was gold in those storage facilities.
L. GREAVES: Keep in mind, my grandfather was when we say he was working on this. So, he worked on -- he shot it in '72, but he was working on this
film actively in the '80s, in the '90s, in the early 2000s. And he died in 2014. But before he passed away in the early 2000s, he was working on this
film. So, it had been something that it was the last thing that he was working on. And we always knew. And that it was -- you know, my grandfather
had made over 79 documentaries throughout his career and he touched over 200 documentaries that he worked on in some capacity. He considered this
footage from 1972 to be the most important thing that he'd ever filmed, the most important event that he'd ever filmed.
So, when you have that, and my grandmother, Louise Greaves, who worked up until her last breath, it was literally until her last breath that she was
ensuring that this was going to reach the public. When we understood how important that was, there wasn't a way that we would not -- and when you
meet the people, when you meet the character, the personalities in the film, and you hear their stories, there's not a way that you don't know how
important it is and how important it is to share it.
And so, we had not -- we did not -- there was never a thought to put it back on the shelf. It just would never have happened.
MARTIN: So, before we let you go, you know, this film arrives at a moment when there is actually, you know, political discourse around black history.
I mean, it's this whole notion of what should be taught, what should be preserved. I mean, you know, this administration, the Trump administration,
tried to remove certain information from historical markers in some places that has been recently added. They're trying to add, you know, disclaimers
at some sort of historical sites.
And as we said, some of these folks had parents who were born into slavery, and also some of them were living in a time when there was racial violence
that was commonplace. I mean, commonplace.
D. GREAVES: Right.
MARTIN: So, I'm wondering what each of you hopes this film will do in the world. Liani, do you want to start?
L. GREAVES: I think the film is so historically important in the world right now. I think it's also -- you know, it's also very useful in the
world right now. And my hope is that people will see it going to see this film. We wanted for people to be in community going to see the film in
theaters. And that people will see that as a sign of resistance to this kind of oppression that we're experiencing around history and who we are as
a nation also.
And I think that -- and it's useful particularly now because of the themes around it, because of the community and empathy that's exhibited in the
film. I think it's useful for us to remember who we are as a nation, what we're capable of, you know. And I think it can be very instructive in that
way. And so, yes, it feels like an act of service to be to the nation to be offering this in the world right now.
D. GREAVES: I think showing this film now as opposed to say in '72 or '73, the times now make this film and seeing it an act of resistance to what is
happening. These are primary sources of folks talking about the black experience, talking about the American experience. And hearing it
unvarnished, if you will.
[13:55:00]
And just straight from the folks who were as close to that time as were ever going to come. There is a rich history behind America, behind African-
Americans in America that has been lost. But here we are and we are determined that it will be seen now, be seen in the future. And folks will
look at it and say, yes, I have to see this film. I have to know about this at this time. And it will not be erased.
MARTIN: David Greaves, Liani Greaves, thank you both so much for talking with me.
L. GREAVES: Thank you so much for having us.
D. GREAVES: Thank you.
L. GREAVES: We appreciate you. Thank you.
D. GREAVES: Absolutely. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" is out today in theaters across the United States. And that is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can
find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media.
Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
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