♪ solemn music playing ♪
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: 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 killed," 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.
♪ somber theme playing ♪
NIKOLE: This is The 1619 Project.
♪ tense music playing ♪
NIKOLE: In 2017, a little more than two years before
Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by white vigilantes,
he was at a park sitting in his car on his day off
when Glynn County police approached him.
OFFICER: What's your name? - Ahmaud.
OFFICER: What is it? - Ahmaud.
OFFICER: Ahmaud?
Whatchu doin' out here, man? [crosstalk]
NIKOLE: 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.
OFFICER: Where's Blue Beacon? - Blue Beacon is on Exit 29, man.
OFFICER: Okay. Listen, man. I'm not-- - Fuck you talkin' about?
OFFICER: 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 fuckin' park! I work!
The fuck is you talkin' about?
I fuckin' work. Check my damn history. OFFICER: Okay.
- Go to my job. OFFICER: Okay.
- Shit, call my job right now. I go to work!
OFFICER: I don't need to call your job, man.
[crosstalk]
NIKOLE: A second officer arrived on the scene
and tried to tase Ahmaud.
[taser crackling]
- Down!
NIKOLE: But it malfunctioned.
- I'm tryna chill on my day off, bro. OFFICER: I gotchu.
- I'm up early in the morning trying to chill.
OFFICER: 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 gang and drug activity.
We get all kinds of stuff out here. - My name tied up in any of that?
OFFICER: No, it is not.
NIKOLE: Eventually, with no reason to detain him,
they let him go.
But the officer made clear why he stopped Ahmaud in the first place.
OFFICER: 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--
NIKOLE: 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.
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: 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.
OFFICER: Are you following him? ZIMMERMAN: Yeah.
OFFICER: Okay, we don't need you to do that.
- Get out the car! OFFICER: Get out now!
- I have not committed any crimes.
- What are you, a specialist, corporal? What are you?
- I'm a lieutenant.
NIKOLE: And in so many devastating cases,
we've seen how it can be fatal.
REPORTER 1: Michael Dunn is charged with murder.
Dunn admitted to firing his weapon,
but said he did it in self-defense
after he says he was threatened by the teens.
REPORTER 2: 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."
REPORTER 3: Officer Yanez took the stand in his own defense
saying, "I did not want to shoot 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 gun.
NIKOLE: Today, we are inundated with scenes
of police and vigilante violence against Black Americans.
And we can trace this epidemic of brutality to slavery,
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.
REPORTER: Teresa Klein accused a nine-year-old boy of sexual assault.
NIKOLE: Reflecting a deeply rooted fear,
not merely of Black crime or Black people...
- I am not an animal!
NIKOLE: ...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 slavery
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.
♪
NIKOLE: In August of 1791, that fear of a reckoning
that so terrified white Americans came true
when a slave 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 slavery.
The existence of a free Black society so close to our slave-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.
NIKOLE: In an effort to maintain the social and economic order,
and to stifle the potential for revolt,
white Americans enacted harsh slave 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 slave patrols.
Slave 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 slave 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 slave 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.
REPORTER: New video from the NYPD shows that woman
tackling that 14-year-old boy
she falsely accused of stealing her cell phone.
WOMAN: 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.
Yeah. WOMAN: On my property.
- It's not your property.
CHRISTIAN COOPER: Please call the cops.
- I'm gonna tell them there's an African-American man
threatening my life.
CHRISTIAN: Please tell them whatever you like.
NIKOLE: The slave 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.
- [indistinct]. I'm being threatened by a man in The Ramble.
Please send the cops immediately.
NIKOLE: People of all races and backgrounds
have been conditioned to fear Black people.
MAN: 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.
NIKOLE: But it is mostly white Americans
who take it upon themselves, again and again, to police Black lives.
MAN: Get out my face. Get out my face. - I'm not in your face!
Get outta my neighborhood, fuckwad! MAN: Who got a gun? Who got a gun?
Who got the gun? - The guy who's got a permit to carry.
MAN: You got a gun? - You're the one that would get a gun!
MAN: All right.
PROFESSOR LESLIE ALEXANDER: 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 murder charges
after the death of a man who was running in Georgia.
NIKOLE: 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.
REPORTER: 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.
NIKOLE: A jury found Travis and Gregory McMichael
guilty of his murder,
but that accountability is the exception, not the rule,
particularly when Black people die at the hands of police.
♪
CECIL HAYES: 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 killed him.
I think about that every single day.
Because, just looking at all the video,
the police don't shoot once, they don't shoot twice.
REPORTER 1: Police officers shot an unarmed Black man 20 times.
REPORTER 2: Sixteen times. REPORTER 3: At least 60 times.
CECIL: 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.
♪
REPORTER 1: We are continuing to push for answers
about the security guard shot and killed by a police officer
in South Suburban Robbins.
REPORTER 2: A 26-year-old father was working security
at Manny's Luxury Lounge.
REPORTER 3: 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 racist muthafucka. Take your ass-- - Him right here!
I told him. He with us!
NIKOLE: On November 11, 2018,
Jemel Roberson's life was tragically cut short
when a police officer made a split-second decision.
[indistinct chatter]
That fatal night began when a fight between patrons broke out,
and gunfire erupted in the club.
DISPATCHER 1: 911, what's your emergency?
PERSON 1: We need the police to the Manny's Blue Room.
There's been shots fired.
DISPATCHER 1: Okay. PERSON 1: Inside the club.
DISPATCHER 1: Okay.
DISPATCHER 2: 911, what's your emergency?
PERSON 2: 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.
[person shouting]
- Another guy reaches over me.
I didn't see his face, I didn't see his hair, none of that.
And he starts shooting.
[gunshots] [person screams]
- He just shot into the club.
He didn't give a fuck who he was shootin' at.
He didn't give a damn 'bout nobody life at that time or nothing.
I tried to wrestle a gun from him.
Well, that's how I end up gettin' shot in my thumb and my forearm.
NIKOLE: In the midst of the chaos, Jemel bravely borrowed a firearm
from a fellow security guard,
and apprehended a suspect in the parking lot.
LEE MERRITT: 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.
NIKOLE: Ian Covey, a white officer from a nearby town,
was among those who responded.
LEE: 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 assault rifle.
And I'm guessin' it was a AR-15.
I don't know what it was, but it was an assault rifle, 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 shooter,
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 gun pointed at Jemel.
Jemel has someone on the ground with a gun 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 gun, drop the gun."
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 gun 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.
PERSON: Why do you got your rifle out right now?!
What threat do you see? Everything was clear.
Everything was down, bro.
He tell him to drop his gun. 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."
REPORTER: The victim, with a big smile and an even bigger heart.
This is a case that is starting to gain international media attention.
NIKOLE: As is so often the case,
the instant assessment of Jemel as a threat
had nothing to do with who he actually was.
DAUGHTER: Mom? - What?
DAUGHTER: I love you.
AVONTEA BOOSE: Be careful.
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: And he also was a musician, is that right?
AVONTEA: 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.
[both laughing] A little bit.
NIKOLE: He was a better organ player
than singer, huh? Okay. AVONTEA: Right, yeah.
- [singing] ♪ Well, I'm singin' happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ I'm singing happy birthday, happy birthday ♪
GARRET TAYLOR: 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! [indistinct]
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.
NIKOLE: 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 killed,
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.
NIKOLE: But instead of becoming a police officer,
Jemel was killed 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 shooting.
He has to identify a deadly threat.
In this case, he says that, obviously, Jemel Roberson was holding a gun,
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.
[radio chatter] [sirens wailing]
NIKOLE: Those simple admissions:
"I feared for my life," or, "I felt threatened,"
have given Americans, particularly law enforcement,
license to kill.
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.
REPORTER: The 12-year-old tried to show the cops his gun was fake,
but the two officers didn't know that,
and feared for their lives.
There will be no indictment.
NIKOLE: Both the tactics and the culture of modern-day policing
have been significantly influenced by the legacy of slave 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 slavery 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.
NIKOLE: The Civil War ended slavery,
but it didn't reduce white fear of Black liberation,
or end the perpetual quest for racial control.
With slavery's demise,
white people across classes and backgrounds
feared economic ruin, a disordered social system,
and most importantly, a loss of white political power.
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER: After the Civil War, as slavery,
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.
NIKOLE: 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
racist 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.
REPORTER: 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 slavery 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.
♪
NIKOLE: 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.
MAN: 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.
[birds chirping]
NIKOLE: 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."
♪
[sirens wailing]
REPORTER 1: 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.
REPORTER 2: 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 war on terror.
No, it's actually rooted in the Vietnam War
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 war
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.
OFFICER [over speaker]: You need to disperse immediately
or you will be subject to arrest.
Do it now!
NIKOLE: 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.
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Our streets! Whose streets?
PROTESTORS [chanting]: 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 guns,
with a lot of militant effort to intimidate Black protestors
and the Black Lives Matter movement.
It was really kind of, like, surreal.
OFFICER: Get outta here! Go!
[indistinct]
- 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. [both laughing]
- 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.
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Black lives matter!
NIKOLE: 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.
[all chanting]
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.
PROTESTORS [chanting]: NYPD! I can't breathe!
[whistle blows] [indistinct shouting]
NIKOLE: 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.
[people screaming]
ELIZABETH HINTON: 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?
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
[Nikole laughs] 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.
♪
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
DERRICK INGRAM: 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.
OFFICER: 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 [on phone]: Hey, so sorry,
I think I lost you.
Um, hey, Derrick-- PERSON [on phone]: There's no warrant.
LAWYER: Hello, can you hear me?
- They blocked my peep-- They blocked my peephole.
OFFICER: We're here to help you.
[officer knocking on door] LAWYER: Okay.
I'm gonna try to add a lawyer--
[officer banging on door]
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: What's verbally assaulting an officer?
Like, just saying unpleasant things to an officer? DERRICK: So-- So, no, so--
NIKOLE: Yelling too loud? DERRICK: 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.
PERSON: Yeah! - You understand? That's--
That right there is bullshit.
- That is bullshit right there, man.
DERRICK: Hearing my community outside of my apartment
protesting, organizing...
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Where's the warrant?
DERRICK: ...screaming for hours,
"Where's the warrant? Where's the warrant?
Let him out. Where's the warrant?"
So, I found solace in that.
NIKOLE: Inside the apartment, the standoff continued.
[officer banging on door]
[doorbell rings] - 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.
♪
NIKOLE: 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."
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: The Department of Homeland Security
began surveilling Black Lives Matter activists in 2014
after the uprisings in Ferguson.
[indistinct shouting on bullhorn]
NIKOLE: 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.
ELIZABETH: Black Identity Extremists, that doesn't exist.
BLM does not represent a terrorist 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.
DERRICK: 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 shit.
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?"
PROTESTORS [singing]: ♪ 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."
[both laughing] - 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.
DERRICK: All of the Warriors start comin' up and everybody's comforting me.
PROTESTORS [chanting]: Never be defeated! The people united will never be defeated!
- What democracy looks like!
PROTESTORS [chanting]: This is what democracy looks like!
NIKOLE: 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.
NIKOLE: ...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.
♪
AVONTEA: 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.
♪
LEE: 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.
AVONTEA: "Who killed him?" I'm like, "I'm sorry to tell this to y'all,
but even though he was a hero, the police shot him."
♪
LEE: 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.
[indistinct chatter]
- Did ya see my haircut?
- What is that? - What happened to my hair?
[laughing]
- 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 murder
into a world that was still fighting for justice for her dad.
[indistinct chatter]
[laughs]
NIKOLE: Following the shooting, 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 killed 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 shooting 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
♪
NIKOLE: As long as our country allows law enforcement
to escape criminal accountability when they kill 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.
NIKOLE: 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.
AVONTEA: 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 kill me like you killed 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.
♪
NIKOLE: 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 slavery, 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.
♪