Black Public Media’s AfroPoP Digital Shorts series continues on MLK Day on Monday with the story of one man’s 40-year battle with homelessness on the mean streets of Hollywood. The Forgotten Ones by Tracii McGregor – a filmmaker who was born in London to Jamaican parents and raised in the U.S. – follows Willie “Billy Brown” Smith, a spry, 75-year-old Black man who has intermittently lived on the streets of the famed district for nearly forty years. Having recovered from decades of hard drug use and alcohol abuse, he started piecing his life back together. The filmmaker catches up with Smith as he lives in a modest but comfortable, one-room apartment in the heart of the only neighborhood he has called home since escaping the oppression he lived under in North Memphis, Tennessee, in 1965.
Smith candidly reflects on the overt racism that led him to flee the Deep South for the City of Angels, an unexpected federal prison stint, which resulted in the loss of the home he owned in L.A., his years battling homelessness and overcoming addiction. The Forgotten Ones is a touching story of one man’s resilience and ultimate triumph over his demons and an unwitting commentary on the enduring complexities of Black American life and elderly homelessness.
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The timely film — given the headlines about the plight and effects of the unhoused — puts a face on the often dismissed unhoused population.
Viewers can watch The Forgotten Ones, part of the monthly AfroPoP Digital Shorts series,on Black Public Media’s YouTube channel.
Based in Harlem, Black Public Media (formerly National Black Programming Consortium) has funded and distributed films about the Black experience since 1979.
