Searching for Tobias

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Mississippi in 2008, Chloe Hadjimatheou met a 15-year-old black boy with dreams of being a policeman. Eight years later, Chloe goes in search of him to find what became of him. Did he prosper in Obama's America?

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Searching for Tobias on the BBC World Service with me Chloe Hadjimuthieu.
0:07.0	This is a story about an ordinary kid with big dreams, a black boy who came of age under Barack Obama's presidency.
0:19.0	We met in 2008 in the poorest state in the country.
0:27.4	Mississippi takes its name from the Great River.
0:30.2	Its vast brown waters meander through some of the country's most deprived communities.
0:35.3	Communities like Vicksburg.
0:37.6	Just an hour west of the state capital Jackson, it's not so much a small town as a series of trailer parks dotted along the lush green banks of the river.
0:47.0	Historically it was an important trading post for cotton on the river highway.
0:55.0	Little of its former prosperity is evident today.
0:58.0	Most of the residents are black working class and poor,
1:02.0	the kind of people who voted for a bummer in the hope
1:05.1	that he'd make a real difference in their lives.
1:08.2	But my overriding memory of Vicksburg is a positive one. Back in 2008, when I was in the United States covering the election on a big BBC tour bus,
1:22.0	we pulled off the main road into a trailer park to do some interviews.
1:26.3	A curious young boy rode up to us on a quad bike to see what we were up to.
1:31.6	Hi there. How are you guys?
1:34.0	Good.
1:35.0	Yeah, what are you up to?
1:37.0	Just riding?
1:38.0	Yeah, where are you riding?
1:39.0	How old are you guys?
1:41.0	I'm 15.
	...

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