In the second part of the series, Trevor visits Morgan Freeman and talks to him about his childhood in the Deep South. He meets a close friend of Dr Martin Luther King who was standing next to him when he was assassinated, and he visits one of Elvis Presley’s first and much-loved girlfriends.
The second part of his journey begins in the quiet town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he meets actor, Morgan Freeman. Morgan tells Trevor that when he was growing up the segregation of black and white people was rigidly enforced, but it didn’t really trouble him until he reached his teenage years.
He says: “I still remember my childhood as being a lot of freedom. I’d get up in the morning, aged four, five, and go hunt my best friend and we would just run. That’s what I remember. I was going to a very good school, I had very good teachers. I was in a very safe environment. What white people did, I didn’t care about.
“I knew that we were separate, if I went into town then there were the separate facilities; the waiting room at the bus station, the water fountains. I didn’t have to go, and I didn’t go, so it didn’t bother me. By the time I graduated from high school, I did have this feeling about Mississippi’s state of apartheid and when I left, I was leaving for good.”
Morgan explains that he started going back to Mississippi when his parents moved back there in the mid 1950s and he eventually returned to live there himself. However, he reveals that he was shocked to discover that although children now go to mixed schools in his local town, they were still encouraged to socialise separately out of school.
Morgan explains that he discovered that black and white teenagers were not going to the same prom so he decided to fund the first integrated prom in Clarksdale in 2008.
He says: “The realisation that even in the 21st century, this kind of thing was being perpetrated upon the children, I just found it bizarre. We’re talking
