01x05 - Fear

[bunniefuu]

A few years ago,

I visited my dad's home state of
Mississippi for the first time.

Mississippi is at once
my ancestral land,

and the sinister setting of
any number of Hollywood movies,

a villain in our
national narrative.

The place where a Black
boy named Emmett Till

was tossed into the Tallahatchie River
with a cotton gin fan around his neck.

And while I was there visiting,

my family told me a
story of fear and terror

that so many Black families
in the Deep South share.

My great uncle Milton,
my dad's namesake,

just a boy at the time,

committed the sin of walking
through a white neighborhood

that he wasn't working in.

Two white teenagers
in a car gave chase,

trying to run him down.

To escape, he jumped into
the murky Tallahatchie.

When he returned
home, muddy and wet,

chest heaving from
panic and exertion,

his mother was livid,
consumed by fear.

"You're going to get
yourself k*lled," she said.

That day, the Tallahatchie
had been his escape.

But for so many Black people,
that same river had become

the watery grave for those who
dared breach the social order.

Fear defined the Mississippi Delta,
and all those who lived within it.

But Black people's everyday
fear of white violence

was itself the product of
another type of fear: white fear.

White fear of Black progress,

prosperity and freedom.

This is
The 1619 Project.

In 2017, a little
more than two years before

Ahmaud Arbery was m*rder*d
by white vigilantes,

he was at a park sitting
in his car on his day off

when Glynn County
police approached him.

- What's your name?
- Ahmaud.

- What is it?
- Ahmaud.

Ahmaud?

Whatchu doin' out
here, man?

The officer ran
Ahmaud's ID through the system,

questioned him, and
searched him for weapons.

- You botherin' me for nothin'.
I work at Blue Beacon, bro.

- Where's Blue Beacon?
- Blue Beacon is on Exit 29, man.

- Okay. Listen, man. I'm not...
- f*ck you talkin' about?

I'm not here
to ruin your day.

I'm here to look for any
kind of criminal activity.

That's all I'm doing.
- Criminal activity?

I'm in a f*ck' park! I work!

The f*ck is you talkin' about?

- I f*ck' work. Check my
damn history. - Okay.

Okay.

- sh*t, call my job
right now. I go to work!

I don't need
to call your job, man.

A second officer
arrived on the scene

and tried to tase Ahmaud.

- Down!

But it malfunctioned.

- I'm tryna chill on my day
off, bro. - I gotchu.

- I'm up early in the
morning trying to chill.

I see, and I get that. I
want... I get wantin' to chill, too.

But we get a lot of bad
stuff happens out here.

We get g*ng and drug activity.

We get all kinds of stuff out here.
- My name tied up in any of that?

No, it is not.

Eventually, with
no reason to detain him,

they let him go.

But the officer made clear why he
stopped Ahmaud in the first place.

But when you get
up and start actin'...

When you get up and start
gettin' all crazy on me,

it gets me... it makes
me a little bit nervous,

you know what I mean?

I'm not here to mess...

As I watched this
earlier video of Ahmaud,

I wondered how many times he
encountered this exact same experience

of being questioned by white
people who believed him suspicious,

until, finally, in 2020,
it cost him his life.

These interactions constitute a part
of daily life for Black Americans.

Suspicion, mistrust, and
fear of Black people,

and in particular, Black men, is
a phenomena as old as this nation.

This guy
looks like he's up to no good,

or he's on drugs or somethin'.

It's raining, and he's just
walking around, looking about.

Are you following
him? ZIMMERMAN: Yeah.

Okay, we don't
need you to do that.

- Get out the car!
- Get out now!

- I have not
committed any crimes.

- What are you, a specialist,
corporal? What are you?

- I'm a lieutenant.

And in so many
devastating cases,

we've seen how it can be fatal.

Michael Dunn
is charged with m*rder.

Dunn admitted to
firing his weapon,

but said he did
it in self-defense

after he says he was
threatened by the teens.

Officer
Shelby's attorney says

she thought Crutcher was
reaching into his vehicle

while refusing to comply with her
orders to "get on the ground."

Officer Yanez took
the stand in his own defense

saying, "I did not want
to sh**t Mr. Castile.

"It was not my intention.

I was scared to death and
I thought I would die."

He said Castile matched the
description of a robbery suspect,

that he smelled marijuana, and
saw Castile reach for a g*n.

Today, we are
inundated with scenes

of police and vigilante violence
against Black Americans.

And we can trace this epidemic
of brutality to sl*very,

when white people desperately sought
to control those they enslaved

out of fear they would rise up
and fight for their own freedom.

It's a fear that has shaped
our nation's politics, culture,

and systems of
justice ever since.

From modern-day policing,
surveillance, and mass criminalization

to white vigilante violence, and
"know your place" aggression.

Teresa Klein accused a
nine-year-old boy of sexual as*ault.

Reflecting a
deeply rooted fear,

not merely of Black
crime or Black people...

- I am not an animal!

but of Black
liberation and equality.

And that fear stretches all the
way back to the colonial era,

before our nation's founding.

So, Professor Alexander,
I want you to help us

understand the
atmosphere of, of fear.

- The colonists are incredibly
fearful of a variety of things, right?

They are fearful of what
they consider to be,

sort of, foreign enemies,
Native Americans,

but their primary fear is centered
towards the enslaved African population

because understandably
and justifiably,

enslaved people do not
want to be enslaved.

As much as white colonists
tried to pretend that sl*very

was a reasonable and
justifiable institution,

they knew very clearly
that the system was wrong,

that it was immoral.

In their minds, they even understood
that it violated the Law of God.

And they knew that some type of
reckoning was eventually going to come.

In August of 1791,
that fear of a reckoning

that so terrified white
Americans came true

when a sl*ve revolt on the island of
Saint-Domingue, now present-day Haiti,

quickly grew to a
full-fledged revolution.

The French had enslaved nearly
half a million Africans there,

and within weeks, almost every
plantation on the island had burned.

- Now, this creates,
as you might imagine,

terror, not just in the Caribbean
and in the other French holdings,

but across the entire Atlantic world
and certainly into the United States.

George Washington is panicking.
Alexander Hamilton is panicking.

Thomas Jefferson is panicking...

- Why are they panicking, because they...
- about what this revolt might mean.

- they believe in rising up,

um, and revolting
against your oppressors.

The Black people of Saint-Domingue
won their revolution,

becoming the first enslaved
people in the history of the world

to successfully overthrow their
enslavers and establish their own nation.

In 1804, they founded Haiti as
the world's first Black republic,

and became the first country in
the Americas to abolish sl*very.

The existence of a free Black society
so close to our sl*ve-holding republic

consumed many white
Americans with fear.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"We have the wolf by the ear,

"and we can neither hold
him, nor safely let him go.

Justice is in one scale, and
self-preservation in the other."

The Haitian Revolution
provides that inspiration

that the white colonists feared.
- It absolutely does.

The founding fathers are
imagining revolt and rebellion

as this contagious,
cancerous disease

that is not going to be contained
within the boundaries of Saint-Domingue,

but is going to spread.

So, in the United States, during and
following the Haitian Revolution,

we see a wave, a crackdown
of laws taking place

trying to repress the
enslaved population.

In an effort to maintain
the social and economic order,

and to stifle the
potential for revolt,

white Americans enacted
harsh sl*ve codes

to police the behavior
of the Black population,

enslaved and free alike.

Codes that restricted the
movements of Black people,

prohibited them from
owning weapons of any kind,

and outlawed their right to assemble
and worship in various ways,

the very freedoms at the
heart of our democracy.

- One of the laws that
has struck and haunted me

since the time I
first encountered it

is a law that was
passed in Charleston

essentially saying that
enslaved and free Black people

are not allowed to participate
in any kind of expression of joy.

So, every imaginable aspect
of enslaved people's lives

is being surveilled,
policed, and controlled.

- So, the white politicians
are passing all of these laws

and all of these
restrictions on Black life,

but they don't do any good if you
don't have anyone to enforce them.

- Right.

- So you also then see the establishment
of a new system of law enforcement

that would come to be
known as the sl*ve patrols.

sl*ve patrols began as an informal
means of policing the enslaved,

but as white fears of the
enslaved population grew,

the patrols became
government-sponsored,

and officials made white
participation mandatory.

These patrols helped form the
foundation of modern policing.

- If you were a white person,
a free citizen in the colonies,

if you refuse to participate
in the sl*ve patrol,

you would have to pay heavy fines.
- Mm.

- So, it's literally
an indication, right,

of citizenship and of whiteness...
- Mm-hmm.

- to participate in
the sl*ve patrols.

- So, what we're
seeing is really

the imprinting of this
on the American psyche.

That... any type of gathering of
Black people, they could be plotting.

If they're going to church,
they're plotting in the church.

If there's three people gathering...
- Yes.

- they're plotting,

so that we begin, collectively, to
think every time you see Black people

doing something, you should be watching them.
- Yes.

New video from
the NYPD shows that woman

tackling that 14-year-old boy

she falsely accused of
stealing her cell phone.

She callin' police
on a 8-year-old little girl.

You can hide all you want. The
whole world gon' see you, boo.

- Yeah, and, um, illegally
selling water without a permit.

On my property.

- It's not your property.

Please call the cops.

- I'm gonna tell them there's
an African-American man

threatening my life.

Please tell
them whatever you like.

The sl*ve patrols deputized
white people and conditioned them

to see all Black people and
their behavior as suspicious.

And today, we see
example after example

of how American society has
internalized this distrust.

. I'm being
threatened by a man in The Ramble.

Please send the
cops immediately.

People of all
races and backgrounds

have been conditioned
to fear Black people.

There's a suspicious
person in the yard,

and if you're not gon'
to identify yourself...

- I don't have to
identify myself.

I live right over there
across the street.

But it is
mostly white Americans

who take it upon themselves, again
and again, to police Black lives.

- Get out my face. Get out my face.
- I'm not in your face!

- Get outta my neighborhood, f*ck!
- Who got a g*n? Who got a g*n?

Who got the g*n?
- The guy who's got a permit to carry.

- You got a g*n?
- You're the one that would get a g*n!

All right.

It's
a legacy of the colonial era,

but it's one that extends long
beyond the American revolution,

that every white person should
be participating in the policing

and surveilling of en... The
enslaved and free Black population.

Being a good member
of the white community

is to be constantly
on the lookout

for any type of suspicious
behavior among Black people.

And it has become a type of
historical memory, right,

that consciously
and unconsciously,

gets passed down from
generation to generation.

- Father and son are now
facing m*rder charges

after the death of a man
who was running in Georgia.

We all know how
Ahmaud Arbery's story ends.

In 2020, he went on a run through
the mostly white neighborhood

of Satilla Shores, just two miles
from his house in Brunswick, Georgia.

A resident saw him and began
to chase him in his truck.

According
to a police report,

the father, Gregory McMichael, said
there had been several break-ins

in the neighborhood,

and a man he viewed as "the suspect"
was running down the street.

A jury found Travis
and Gregory McMichael

guilty of his m*rder,

but that accountability is
the exception, not the rule,

particularly when Black people
die at the hands of police.

Black
people love harder

on the strength that
we're so devalued,

it's almost like we love harder

because it's a lot harder
for us to be loved.

Every time I leave the house, I
tell my wife and my kids I love 'em.

They tell me they love me
because what we do understand is

we could walk out this door
and never see each other again.

As a Black father, you don't
ever wanna get that call.

I let my kid walk down the
street, I let my kid go over here,

and, you know, for whatever reason,
the police came through and k*lled him.

I think about that
every single day.

Because, just looking
at all the video,

the police don't sh**t once,
they don't sh**t twice.

Police officers shot
an unarmed Black man 20 times.

- Sixteen times.
- At least 60 times.

They unload
entire clips,

and then they look
and see what they did.

And that's the fear.

It's not just the
fear of gettin' shot,

it's the fear of getting
your body obliterated.

Every day is like playing chess
when you walk out the house.

We are continuing
to push for answers

about the security guard shot
and k*lled by a police officer

in South Suburban Robbins.

A 26-year-old
father was working security

at Manny's Luxury Lounge.

People in the crowd

yelled to arriving police
that Roberson was a guard.

Still, one responding
officer shot him,

who later died at the hospital.

- You shot him and he with us!

- You a r*cist muthafucka. Take your a*s...
- Him right here!

I told him. He with us!

On November 11, 2018,

Jemel Roberson's life
was tragically cut short

when a police officer made
a split-second decision.

That fatal night began when a
fight between patrons broke out,

and g*nf*re erupted in the club.

911,
what's your emergency?

We need the police
to the Manny's Blue Room.

There's been shots fired.

- Okay.
- Inside the club.

Okay.

911,
what's your emergency?

Hello, I've been shot!
Please! DISPATCHER 2: Where are you at?

Where are you at? PERSON 2:
I'm at Manny's Blue Room!

- I didn't know what was goin' on.
I just seen the op... altercation.

I just heard it.

You have Jemel and, like,
three other security guards

who had to grab three people.

It was so many people they
was tryin' to put out.

- Another guy reaches over me.

I didn't see his face, I didn't
see his hair, none of that.

And he starts sh**ting.

- He just shot into the club.

He didn't give a f*ck
who he was shootin' at.

He didn't give a damn 'bout nobody
life at that time or nothing.

I tried to wrestle
a g*n from him.

Well, that's how I end up gettin'
shot in my thumb and my forearm.

In the midst of the chaos,
Jemel bravely borrowed a firearm

from a fellow security guard,

and apprehended a suspect
in the parking lot.

The other security
guards began to clear the scene,

officers who were present at
the scene began to respond.

These are officers
from Robbins, Illinois.

And then other officers were
being called to the scene.

Ian Covey, a white
officer from a nearby town,

was among those who responded.

All accounts say that
by the time that Ian Covey,

who was with the Midlothian
Police Department, arrived,

the scene, in and of itself,
was beginning to calm down.

- As I'm at the bar with my
hand wrapped up and everything,

a police officer, I don't know what, uh,
station or city he was from at the time,

he came in and got on top of
the bar with a-an as*ault r*fle.

And I'm guessin' it was a AR-15.

I don't know what it was, but it
was an as*ault r*fle, definitely.

- Covey's not interacting with
the other officers who are there.

This is his opportunity
to learn that

those law enforcement
officers who are present

are coordinating with the security
guards to secure the scene.

Instead, he sort of takes
matters into his own hands.

He's looking around
for a sh**ter,

or for somebody to direct
his energy towards.

- We like, "All the trouble's
outside. You in the wrong area."

So, at the time, he goes
out to the side door,

and that's where he sees Jemel.

So, when I went out there, he sees
Jemel, he has his g*n pointed at Jemel.

Jemel has someone on the
ground with a g*n to his back,

just holdin' him 'til
he has his security team

or the actual police come
and help him, assist him.

- And Officer Ian Covey
approaches him from behind.

From the descriptions that
I've been able to gather,

he's about, maybe, 10 feet away from
Jemel when he shouts, "Drop the weapon."

- And I hear everybody, "He's
security, he's security."

I'm standin' up right there.

I'm yellin' the same
thing. "He's security."

He has his AR-15 pointed at him,

"Freeze, drop the
g*n, drop the g*n."

We're yellin', "He's
security, he's security."

- But Officer Ian Covey opens fire
on Jemel Roberson strikin' him

in his back several times.

- I don't think he gave Jemel
enough time to respond to him

far as givin' up, releasing
the g*n and everything.

Hell, it wasn't even 10 seconds.

Didn't even feel like it was 10
seconds. It just happened so fast.

He, he died right in front of me.
He, he got shot right in front of me.

We all was in shock.

Why do you got
your r*fle out right now?!

What threat do you see?
Everything was clear.

Everything was down, bro.

He tell him to drop his g*n. I'm
tellin' him he workin' with us.

"Cool out. He's
workin' with us."

He shot him, four or five times
after we told him he's with us.

- I think he shot Jemel because
he thought Jemel was a threat.

How big he was.

And then he like, "Oh,
he got on black clothes,

so he might be a threat."

The victim, with a big
smile and an even bigger heart.

This is a case that is starting to
gain international media attention.

As is so
often the case,

the instant assessment
of Jemel as a threat

had nothing to do with
who he actually was.

- Mom?
- What?

I love you.

Be careful.

For people who won't
be blessed to, to meet Jemel,

just what, what
kinda person was he?

- He was a protector, he was
funny, he was charming, lovable.

And he also was a
musician, is that right?

Yeah. He used to go to church
every... NIKOLE: Tell me about that.

So, he was faithful?
- Faithful, faithful.

Like, every Sunday, I'm like,
"Ooh gosh. He's real good."

'Cause, like, he had the little
voice. Like, 'cause he had...

- Oh, he could sing, too?
- A little bit.

A little bit.

He was a
better organ player

- than singer, huh? Okay.
- Right, yeah.

♪ Well, I'm
singin' happy birthday ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

♪ I'm singing happy
birthday, happy birthday ♪

Every birthday,
he always sing it to me.

It was like a, a church
hymn or somethin' like that.

That was like... That's my
favorite video to watch of him.

Me and Jemel been knowing each
other since, like, Pampers.

Garret, no!

Garret, no. Garret, it's playoffs, bro.
- I'm grown. I'm in college, I'm grown.

My brother, my best friend.

Like, everything he did was always
lookin' out for the next person.

Really didn't have to worry about
anything with Jemel in the neighborhood

'cause he was just
so protective.

Jemel was
so protective,

that when Avontea's
son Tristan was a baby,

he cared for him as his own,

and just 10 days before
Jemel was k*lled,

he and Avontea discovered
they were pregnant.

- He was excited...
- Was he?

- Yes. He like, "Oh,
I hope it's a girl."

'Cause I'm like... 'Cause he
already... He had Tristan.

- So, Jemel was 26 years
old. What were his dreams?

What, what did he want?

- He wanted to be
a police officer.

- Why did he wanna be a
police officer? What was it?

- He wanted to take the
bad guys off the street.

He wanted to make the
streets a better place,

wanna make sure the streets
all good for my son.

But instead of
becoming a police officer,

Jemel was k*lled by one.

And as it is with
so many other cases,

the officer who shot him was not
held accountable for taking his life.

- Officer Ian Covey's defense was
similar to the kind of res... defense

that we hear in almost every
single officer-involved sh**ting.

He has to identify
a deadly threat.

In this case, he says that, obviously,
Jemel Roberson was holding a g*n,

and that firearm was a potential
deadly threat to him and to others.

This is how they
avoid accountability.

- Officer Wilson, in his own words,
saying he feared for his life.

- The reason my client, Jason,
fired his weapon that, that evening

back in October 2014

is that, um, he truly
was in fear for his life.

Those
simple admissions:

"I feared for my life,"
or, "I felt threatened,"

have given Americans,
particularly law enforcement,

license to k*ll.

For police, it's a license
that is protected by law

under what's known as
"qualified immunity,"

a legal rule that shields
them from lawsuits that allege

they violated a
citizen's rights.

The 12-year-old tried
to show the cops his g*n was fake,

but the two officers
didn't know that,

and feared for their lives.

There will be no indictment.

Both the tactics and the
culture of modern-day policing

have been significantly influenced
by the legacy of sl*ve patrols.

Patrollers routinely
broke into cabins

searching for contraband,
hunted for fugitives,

and stopped and searched any Black
person they deemed suspicious,

often physically abusing them.

Modern policing employs similar
tactics including no-knock raids,

the seizure of assets, and
stop-and-frisk policies

that were most famously used
by the New York City police.

So, Professor Alexander, we're
standing here in New York City.

This was the place where
a federal judge ruled

that Black people were being
unconstitutionally stopped

in what's called stop-and-frisk.
- Yeah.

- And so, it seems like from
the time of sl*very until now,

the role of policing in Black communities
has not been necessarily about serving.

- When it comes to Black communities,
historically and contemporarily,

the role of the police has really
been about surveillance and control.

The Civil
w*r ended sl*very,

but it didn't reduce white
fear of Black liberation,

or end the perpetual
quest for racial control.

With sl*very's demise,

white people across
classes and backgrounds

feared economic ruin, a
disordered social system,

and most importantly, a loss
of white political power.

After
the Civil w*r, as sl*very,

as a social institution,
starts to fade away,

there's a desire across much of the
South, as well as throughout the North,

to make sure that Black people remain
at the bottom of the social order.

So, what you see is the
rise of the Ku Klux Klan

and other types of white
supremacist organizations

that take up the
extra-legal approaches

of keeping the Black community
in its place while the police

become a legalized,
formalized way

of monitoring and
surveilling and maintaining

control over the
Black population.

For the next century, in
the period of racial apartheid

known as Jim Crow,

law enforcement acted as the brazen
legal arm of white supremacy.

The white South maintained its social,
economic and political dominance

through wanton acts of violence,

either by, or abetted by, local
and state law enforcement.

To many white Americans, the success
of the civil rights movement,

which ended explicit legal
discrimination against Black Americans,

signaled a turn into
a post-racial society.

But for Black Americans,
what became clear is that

r*cist structures that ordered our
society for its first 350 years

would not disappear simply
because the laws changed.

They adapted to new forms,
and racism became more covert.

A 2006 FBI assessment warned of
the threat of white nationalists

infiltrating law enforcement,

and a 2022 Reuters
investigation revealed

that the presence of white supremacists
and white supremacist thinking

in U.S. law enforcement
is still pervasive.

An internal probe by
the Wilmington Police Department

reveals hate-filled conversations
with three veteran officers.

- So, in many ways, Black people,
and particularly poor Black people,

are still seen as an internal
enemy in the United States.

- I think very much so.

Once sl*very was over,
American society has not been

entirely sure what to do
with the Black population.

But we find ourselves, now, in
contemporary society, in which,

when Black people try
to assert their rights

in response to police conduct,

the police respond with more
and more aggressive violence.

When Frederick
Douglass said,

"If there is no struggle,
there is no progress,"

he understood fully
that Black demands

for equality and justice

to simply achieve the
rights of any other American

would be met with
staunch resistance.

He knew that the architecture
of white supremacy

would not come down
without a fight.

And so, non-violent, passive resistance,
as a means of protest, was rewarded

with the violent murders
of movement leaders.

Black power militancy was
met with government efforts

to destroy and discredit
the organizations,

and an increasingly
militarized response by police.

And yet, despite the high cost

that the fear of Black equality
has wrought on Black people,

our rebellions, our
insistence on liberty,

have never ceased.

And it is no accident,
that nearly always,

these rebellions are in response
to an act of police violence.

Because police interact in
Black communities every day,

they are often seen as the face
of larger systems of inequality

in the justice system, employment,
education, and housing.

- The people have a right,
they're totally justified

in going out into the
streets, takin' up arms,

and dealin' with that situation.

And so, this is the reason
I feel the people are doin' this.

They're trying to show that they are
angry against the police brutality.

The United States sees this
wave of rebellions in Black communities

leading up to the assassination
of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.

And then we see more than a hundred
rebellions in cities, big and small.

What do these rebellions
signal about the limits of

and the frustration
with nonviolent protest,

um, for racial equality?

- The thinking is we have tried
for decades, if not centuries,

through non-violent means,
through direct action protests,

through petitions,
through boycotts

to try to... achieve
freedom and liberation,

and that hasn't worked.

So, for the generation that had watched
the civil rights movement unfold,

and were now in 1968 living in
very much the same conditions,

their tactics shifted,
and logically so,

to say, "Well, if
you're gonna beat me up,

"and I'm not getting any kind of
recourse or justice from nonviolence,

then I'm going to fight back."

Newark,
the summer of ‘67.

Detroit, the summer of ‘67.

Regular army troops moved
into the nation's capital

to protect strategic
locations from the violence

spreading through the city.

From the air,
the scene looked unreal,

a row of fires in the middle
of an otherwise tranquil city.

- What changes, then, as a result
of this wave of rebellions?

- The major shift
that happens in '68

is the Omnibus Crime Control
and Safe Streets Act.

This legislation began what was several
billion dollars, in today's money,

investment into police and
courts and prison systems.

Most of this money going
to the targeted expansion

and militarization of police
in the very same communities

that had rebelled during the
second half of the 1960s.

The Act also begins the transfer
of surplus military technologies

from the army to
local law enforcement.

When Ferguson happened,

and we saw all those armored
tanks on the streets,

people were like, "Where
did this come from?"

People assumed that it was the
product of the w*r on terror.

No, it's actually rooted
in the Vietnam w*r

and U.S. interventions in Latin
America and the Caribbean.

- Can we pause on
that for a second

because I think a lotta people
will be shocked to learn

that the military has all of this
leftover weaponry from Vietnam.

And the decision is

that we will deploy that weaponry
against American citizens who are Black.

What does that say about
the fear of Black people,

and particularly
Black rebellion,

that they would transport
weaponry that was used in w*r

to put down rebellion
amongst American citizens?

- These rebellions are about
access to decent healthcare,

access to educational
opportunities,

um, they're demands about
living in decent housing.

They're about jobs.

They're about full political and
economic inclusion in U.S. society.

And in labeling them as "riots,"

then they become nothing
other than criminal acts.

The strategies were not,

"What are the larger
social and economic forces

that are causing this
collective violence?"

The response is, "We're gonna
treat the Black community

like we're treating
the Viet Cong."

We're gonna use helicopters,
we're gonna use tanks.

We're gonna have tanks rolling
through Black neighborhoods.

- Like, that's crazy.
- Right.

- Except... it's not.
- Except, it's not

because any threat to
the established order

then becomes a threat.

And the tools that are shored
up to respond to that threat

are militaristic, are
violent in and of themselves.

You
need to disperse immediately

or you will be
subject to arrest.

Do it now!

The
militaristic response

to the 2014 uprisings
in Ferguson, Missouri,

galvanized the newly formed
Black Lives Matter movement,

and motivated a whole new generation of
activists intent on Black liberation.

Our
streets! Whose streets?

- Our streets!
- Whose streets?

- Our streets!
- Whose streets?

- Hey, Derrick. So, this is the
only time I'll call you Derrick

because I know you, you go by Dwreck, but.
- All right... I do.

- So, tell me about what was that
experience like protesting in Ferguson?

- So, that was overwhelming.

Um, I'm... I do well in,
in the middle of chaos.

- Mm.
- But it was really gut-wrenching seeing,

you know, such a small suburb
that is majority Black,

but, usually, pretty peaceful.

With military there,
with tanks, with g*ns,

with a lot of militant effort
to intimidate Black protestors

and the Black Lives
Matter movement.

It was really kind
of, like, surreal.

Get outta here! Go!

- Most of my formative years,
I was raised in St. Louis,

when I went to school in
the suburbs of St. Louis,

not too far from
the Ferguson area.

- What do you remember learning
about police when you were little?

- I've always kind of had an
aversion for authority in general.

I am the rebel of my family...
- Are you a Aries?

I am.

- So am I. That's how I
knew. Anyway, go ahead.

- So, yeah, always just
questioned authority,

and, like, why things operate
in the way that they do.

One of my earliest memories
is a officer stopping my dad

in the suburbs of St. Louis,

pulling him over, and breaking
his ID in front of me,

and then giving him a ticket
for driving without a license.

- How old were you?
- I had to be around nine years old.

Uh, and just seeing
that made me question

why does policing operate
in the way that it does.

I don't feel like
my story's unique.

There's people throughout the U.S.
that are intimidated by the police,

surveilled by the police,
demonized by the police,

but they don't live
to tell their story.

Black lives matter!

In the spring of 2020,
pervasive police violence,

the tragic consequence of
the legacy of white fear,

once again became undeniable
in the eyes of many Americans.

George Floyd didn't choose to
be a martyr for racial justice,

yet the collective witness
of his modern-day lynching

spawned a national, multiracial movement
that I have not witnessed in my lifetime.

Between May and August of 2020,

Americans participated in more than
7,000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations

across the country.

Over 93% remained non-violent.

NYPD! I can't breathe!

But the violent
response of law enforcement

to these peaceful demonstrators

made it abundantly clear
that too many in power

still feel threatened by
protests for Black rights.

So, in response to these massive
Black Lives Matter protests in 2020,

we actually saw very
anti-democratic laws being passed

in certain states that
were criminalizing protest.

Can you talk about some of those laws
and how do laws like that impact,

uh, efforts for Black Americans
to achieve racial justice?

- Immediately after the
protests in the summer of 2020,

Republican-led
state legislatures

enacted all kinds of draconian
"anti-riot bills," as they're called,

which are, essentially, about limiting
people's first amendment right to protest.

- Lawmakers are introducing stiff
new penalties for public disorder.

- All kinds of new criminal penalties
introduced making protest a criminal act.

- The law now offers
protections to police officers

while also increasing
penalties for rioters.

- And also, at the same time,

decriminalizing people
who attack protestors.

- Measures granting immunity
to drivers who hit protesters

are gaining steam in
Iowa and in Oklahoma.

The
legislation in Oklahoma

decriminalized people who would
ram their cars into protestors.

And the fact that so many
of these anti-riot bills

are decriminalizing
violence against protests

while criminalizing the
protests themselves,

I think, says it all.

- What does it say?

- It is a stark reflection

of the way that white supremacy
structures American society,

and who gets to be a citizen, who
gets to protest, and who doesn't.

Who gets to use violence
and who doesn't?

The state violence deployed
against the Black Lives Matter protesters

had taken a toll
on Derrick Ingram,

and despite his visceral reaction
to the George Floyd tape,

at first, he wasn't
moved to action.

- I didn't think organizing
would change much,

and I had become really cynical.

But then I had a friend I had
protested with in St. Louis,

literally, knock on my door, and
said, we needed to go outside,

and, uh, that
changed everything.

I grabbed my combat boots,
and, um, I was ready to go.

Derrick co-founded
the activist collective

Warriors in the Garden,

and their first protest
was roughly 10,000 strong.

So, talk to me,
Dwreck, about what was

your particular role in
Warriors in the Garden?

- I was Head of Communications.

So, one of the things I
did was doing teach-ins,

and teaching community
on how to be safe,

teaching things about
exactly what to do

if they thought there was social
media monitoring going on,

and really just teaching about
surveillance and over-policing,

and, and the worst things
that can happen to protestors.

- When did you begin to suspect
that you were being watched?

- You know, I always
kinda had an inkling,

but I thought it was
unjustifiable paranoia

because we had committed
ourselves to nonviolence.

I really was hoping that we
would fly under the radar.

- And what happened?
- After every protest,

we would go to ba... a bar,
um, in the Lower East Side,

had amazing margaritas.
- Blow off some steam.

- Blow off some
steam and decompress.

That night, I went a little too hard,
had at least three or four margaritas,

took a Uber home, attempted
to cook a steak, I think.

And it
just didn't work out,

so I, I went, I went to sleep,

and, uh, I woke up, and there
was a knock at the door.

I saw a Caucasian man that
had on an all-blue outfit.

- When you first hear a knock on
the door, you don't see anything.

You get up, come to the door.
- Get up, yeah. I get up...

- Look through the peephole.
- Look through the peephole.

Ans... um, answer,

and I initially did answer, and
I cracked, cracked the door.

We had...
- Did you have a chain on or no?

- Not at first.

- Oh.
- Not at first.

I, I, I thought it was a delivery
person or somethin' like that.

And then, as soon as he said
he had a warrant for my arrest,

I immediately slammed the door,

deadbolted it,

and that's when I told
him to slide the warrant,

and it, and it just never came.

Concerned that this
mysterious man at his door

might be setting a trap,

Derrick refused to
leave his apartment,

and immediately told
his fellow activists

to communicate with him
over an encrypted chat.

So... you've slammed the
door on the police officer.

No warrants come under
the door. What happened?

- So, it turned into
around a six-hour standoff.

In an effort to protect him,
Derrick's fellow activists told him

to document what was
happening on Instagram Live.

Throughout the standoff, Derrick
was simultaneously live streaming,

talking with lawyers
on the phone,

and communicating with the
police through the door.

A lot
started happening after that

in terms of police involvement.

They started
knocking at my door,

calling me abrasive, saying
I was being aggressive.

You're the one
being hostile right now.

- I'm not being hostile.
I'm calm. I'm calm.

I'm very calm, y'all.

I am not being hostile.
He called me hostile.

I am calm... I am chill. LAWYER
Hey, so sorry,

I think I lost you.

Um, hey, Derrick... PERSON : There's no warrant.

Hello,
can you hear me?

- They blocked my peep...
They blocked my peephole.

We're
here to help you.

Okay.

I'm gonna try to add a lawyer...

Not only were there
police outside Derrick's door,

there were sharpshooters
positioned across the street,

and helicopters overhead.

So, you have to be thinking, at
some point, like, "I might die."

- I thought that was a
definite possibility.

- Did they finally tell
you why, why they're there?

- This all was allegedly happening
because I was being accused of

yelling at an officer
at a, at a protest.

And at that protest, we
were surrounded by officers

on both sides as well as
in front and behind us.

And I took it upon myself
to confront the officers

and tell them that they needed
to, to stop intimidating us,

to let us through, and
let us continue our march.

- So, what was the crime?
- What was the crime?

Allegedly, verbally
assaulting an officer.

What's verbally
assaulting an officer?

Like, just saying unpleasant things to
an officer? DERRICK: So... So, no, so...

Yelling too loud?
Yeah, yelling too loud via megaphone.

That was the accusation.

- Wow. And all of these officers...
- So...

- How many officers would you say,
at the height that day, were here?

- Thirty-plus officers,
according to my lawyers,

were at the scene.

- Why you gonna sit there
and try to arrest somebody

that's organized a protest?

That's doin' somethin'
for positive things.

- Yeah!
- You understand? That's...

That right there is bullshit.

- That is bullshit
right there, man.

Hearing my community
outside of my apartment

protesting, organizing...

Where's the warrant?

screaming for hours,

"Where's the warrant?
Where's the warrant?

Let him out. Where's
the warrant?"

So, I found solace in that.

Inside the apartment,
the standoff continued.

I'm coming out soon.

I'm coordinating with my
lawyers on how to proceed.

- So, I'm just thinking about
your own experiences growing up,

everything that we've seen about
police interactions with Black people,

and I'm just imagining, like, your
heart has to be thudding in your chest.

What are you feeling
at that moment?

- My mind was racing, but physically,
I'm really tryna think, "Okay, calm down.

What do I need to
do to address this?"

My biggest fear is that
if I let them in my unit,

they're gonna try to harm me,

and if I leave, I think they're
gonna plant something here.

- So, you're publicly
preparing for violence...

- Definitely.
- And a cover-up?

- Definitely.
- Mm-hmm.

- I think that's law
enforcement's MO,

especially when it comes to Black
people that they see as radical.

Fear of
Black liberation

has long motivated state
and federal authorities

to surveil and
sabotage Black leaders,

civil rights activists,
and Black-led organizations

attempting to disrupt the
existing social order.

Can you talk about
government surveillance,

and, uh, the targeting of
activists going from the 1960s

and the parallels that we've seen much
more recently with Black Lives Matter?

- If you were seen as a civil
rights leader... or organization,

you were infiltrated
by Black informants,

and you were followed,
sometimes harassed, by the FBI

with the idea that the
government needs to keep tabs

on what this internal enemy is doing
and planning in order to squash it.

- A Black activist says he is the first
person to be targeted and prosecuted

under a secretive U.S.
surveillance effort

to track so-called "Black
Identity Extremists."

The belief that
the federal government's

targeting of Black
leaders died in the '70s

with J. Edgar Hoover's
counterintelligence program is false.

It has never stopped.

- We continue to see
Black organizations

getting targeted by
state and federal

law enforcement
agencies to this day.

The Department
of Homeland Security

began surveilling Black Lives
Matter activists in 2014

after the uprisings in Ferguson.

And just a few
years later, in 2017,

leaked documents
revealed that the FBI

had created a new threat classification
called "Black Identity Extremists,"

Black activists that the FBI considered
likely to attack law enforcement.

Black Identity
Extremists, that doesn't exist.

BLM does not represent
a t*rror1st threat...

- Right.
- To U.S. society, yet by labeling it

as an extremist group, as
something to be feared,

then the FBI can watch
what people are doing

as they are struggling and
organizing for justice.

- These days, if we watch
the movie on Fred Hampton,

or a documentary
on the King tapes,

we say, "Man, I can't believe
our government did that,"

which means we're in denial about what
our government is doing right now.

- Mm-hmm.
- That the things that we now clearly know,

um, were wrong back then,
we are accepting right now.

As the standoff moved
into its sixth hour,

Derrick's determination
began to waver.

I'm thinkin' that
it's time to surrender,

and literally my
hand's at the door,

and I'm getting messages,
"Don't give up, Dwreck.

They're leaving,
they're leaving."

And I'm thinkin',

y'all have been sayin' that
for the last two hours.

My friends are full of sh*t.

They just don't want me
to leave this apartment.

And I was so close to leaving.

Literally, this is how close
I was to openin' the door.

And all of a sudden, I hear cheerin',
and my name bein' screamed outside,

and I was like, "Is
this... What's goin' on?"

And then, you know
on Instagram Live

when the hearts start comin' up?
- Yes.

- There's hundreds of hearts
comin' up, and I'm like,

"What the hell is goin'..."
- "What happened?"

♪
Na-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey, goodbye ♪

- Everybody's like, "They're
gone, they're gone, they're gone."

I still didn't believe it.
- Were you like, "This a trap."

This is... I was
like... I still didn't believe it.

And then, the next thing I know,

I hear one of my friends
outside of the door.

He's like, "It's John, open up."
And I said, "What's our password?"

He gave me the password,
I cracked the door,

he pushes in, gives me a hug.
- Oh, man.

All of the Warriors start
comin' up and everybody's comforting me.

Never be defeated!
The people united will never be defeated!

- What democracy looks like!

This
is what democracy looks like!

Despite what the
police initially stated,

they never had a warrant
for Derrick's arrest,

and the charges against him
were ultimately dropped.

All that money, all that
resources, all those man hours

when there's actual crime
occurring... DERRICK: Exactly.

in the biggest
city in the country,

it doesn't make sense,
and then to just leave?

- Just left, and they left
when... it became really popular.

All these people were
sharing my Instagram Live,

and it was getting
media coverage,

and I think if I didn't have
the, the wherewithal to film,

and I didn't get
advised to do so,

and I didn't have community

outside filming...
- Right.

- oh, there would've been something
way more nefarious that occurred.

I miss
him bein' around,

bein' able to help
me with the kids.

I miss everything.

I miss jokin' around, I
miss somebody to love me,

tell me everything is
gonna be all right.

I can say that the
loss of Jemel to this family

is devastating in a way that
will never be made up for.

He wasn't only a financial provider,
he was an emotional provider.

Everyone who talks about Jemel talks
about how secure he made them feel.

He was happy that he
was becoming a father,

and that he would be
able to give his children

things in life that he, he didn't
have a chance to experience.

It breaks my heart to
see that kind of loss.

- What does Tristan and even Justice
understand about what happened to Jemel?

Because I... I'm trying to think

how do you explain this
to very young children

who are asking for their father?

- Yeah. They keep...
They ask me about it.

It's like, "What happened
to our dad?" NIKOLE: Mm-hmm.

"Who k*lled him?" I'm like,
"I'm sorry to tell this to y'all,

but even though he was a
hero, the police shot him."

You gettin a
fade? What's up, man?

- I was waiting on you.
- You was waitin' on me?

You knew I was comin'?

Who told you?
- You.

- I told you I was comin'?
- Yeah.

- Did ya see my haircut?

- What is that?
- What happened to my hair?

- How's it goin'?
- Good.

- Good to see ya.

Watchin' a 4-year-old try to
process death is very difficult.

Uh, he, he often
talks about his dad.

He talks about having
conversations with him,

and I'm not sure if those
are dreams or memories.

Tristan has to confront
the reality of death

in a way that is almost impossible for
a child his age to fully comprehend.

And Justice Roberson never had
a chance to meet her father.

She was born months
after his m*rder

into a world that was still
fighting for justice for her dad.

Following the sh**ting,
Jemel's mother, Beatrice Roberson,

filed a wrongful
death suit against

Officer Covey and the
village of Midlothian.

And after an almost two-year
criminal investigation,

the Cook County State's Attorney's Office
announced a decision on Jemel's case.

- No criminal charges for
the Midlothian police officer

who k*lled a Black security guard in
the South Suburbs nearly two years ago.

This morning, Cook County
State's Attorney Kim Fox says

her office found there
was not enough evidence

to charge Covey for that fatal
2018 sh**ting of Roberson.

- My family and I will never
be able to put this behind us.

State's Attorney Kim Fox and her
office has let my family down.

Jemel's family, ultimately,
reached a civil settlement

with the village of Midlothian.

- More than three years after
security guard Jemel Roberson

was shot by a South
Suburban police officer,

the family has settled
with Midlothian Police

for more than seven
million dollars.

- The city, Midlothian,
has admitted no wrongdoing,

there was no criminal
accountability,

uh, or even a, uh, a
presentation to the grand jury.

It's very difficult to hold an
officer accountable, civilly,

at all in these circumstances.

The only remedy available in
civil court is monetary rewards.

A $7.5 million, uh, recovery is
far above the national average.

Those funds are
placed into a trust

that will be available to Jemel's
only daughter when she turns 18.

My goal as a civil rights attorney is
to make police brutality unsustainable.

We hope that cities like
Midlothian are forced to pay

these multimillion-dollar
settlements,

so that they're forced to reevaluate
the kind of officers that they have,

the kind of training
that they provide,

and when force is allowed.

As long as our
country allows law enforcement

to escape criminal accountability
when they k*ll Black citizens,

civil lawsuits will be the only
recourse families like Jemel's have.

But settlements can never
repair such a tragic loss,

and seem to send the message that
officers who take Black lives

can do so without consequence.

And for those like Derrick Ingram
who live to tell their stories,

this tragic understanding remains
the reason he continues to fight.

Has there been any recourse for
you, whatsoever, for what NYPD did?

- The police, they have not
been held accountable at all.

I have a civil rights
lawsuit against the NYPD

for violating my human rights,
as well as surveilling me.

What they did to me

is gonna stick with me for a long
time, and I'm still processing,

but it's really invigorated me
and a lot of people around me

to further strengthen
the movement,

um, and to really make me hyper-focus
on, on makin' a difference.

The assumptions
made about Derrick and Jemel

echo the 400-year-old stereotypes
about who we are as Black Americans.

Fear of our fathers, our
brothers, our friends.

Fear of who our children
will one day grow up to be.

He already
question police,

so I'm definitely terrified
for him when he get older.

So, I think when
he get older, like,

"Oh, so you gonna k*ll me
like you k*lled my dad?"

I don't want him
to feel like that.

I don't want him to be
scared of the police,

even though I know he is.

Four hundred
years of white fear

that begets Black fear.

Four hundred years of racism constructed
to take opportunity and to steal wealth.

What must this nation
do to make things right?

- They started in
sl*very, you had nothin'.

Z... You were a zero.

So, now you have these things,

so you begin to accumulate
and, uh, build wealth

for your children and
your grandchildren.

And all of a sudden, in-in
two weeks, it's gone.

- What is this community
owed for what happened?

- There's no, uh, ah, that's... There's
not a price you can put on that.