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♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

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(CHILDREN PLAYING)

-CHILD 1: (SINGING) ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ -(CHILD 2 LAUGHING)

CHILDREN: ♪ La, la, la, la, la, la ♪

(OVERLAPPING VOICES AND LAUGHTER)

CHILDREN: ♪ La, la, la, la, la ♪

Dear son,

I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

Daughter...

Son...

Dear son...

Dear brothers...

Nephew, I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

To my daughter...

I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

♪ ("SOUNDTRACK TO CONFUSION" BY BLACK THOUGHT PLAYING) ♪

♪ Revelation of a blessin' In disguise ♪

♪ I looked hate in the face ♪

♪ And read the message In his eyes ♪

♪ They clickbaited a nation Then requested the response ♪

♪ And dictated the makings Of another renaissance ♪

♪ But wait, the fate of it's What the government decides ♪

♪ And I don't mean the state I mean this government of ours ♪

♪ The mark Ark of the Covenant requires ♪

♪ Frauds, I'm making a mockery Of 'em with the bars alone ♪

♪ The population Of the world has grown ♪

♪ And more people in the streets Than live in gorgeous homes ♪

♪ A lotta heavy conflict zones The swords are shown ♪

♪ I'm tryna study All the language ♪

♪ On the Georgia Stones ♪

♪ To quote the classic joint What a fool believes ♪

♪ And what the teachers Of the school believes ♪

♪ Is very different From what the thieves ♪

♪ And the class In rule believes ♪

♪ I'm tryna give y'all Some jewelries ♪

♪ We under pressure Like a diamond mine ♪

♪ Huntin' it Somethin' like a phenomenon ♪

♪ And we losin' light Like M. Night Shyamalan ♪

♪ Them people Searchin' for somethin' ♪

♪ With body armor on ♪

♪ You never know Who they wantin' ♪

♪ That's why we on the law ♪

♪ Preparin' me That isn't necessary ♪

♪ What I'm haunted by Is knowin' ♪

♪ Where the bodies are buried Yet I'm taunted by the omen ♪

♪ Knowin' my adversary I'm gone to Neveruary ♪

♪ It's on It's gettin' heavy for real ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Son...

I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

I'm telling you because this is the year

that you saw Eric Garner choked to death

for selling cigarettes.

Because... you know now

that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help,

that John Crawford was shot...

for browsing a department store.

You have seen men in uniform drive by

and murder Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy

whom they were oath-bound to protect.

You've seen men in the same uniform

pummel Marlene Pinnock, someone's grandmother,

on the side of a road.

Son, this is the week that you learned...

that the killers of Michael Brown

would never be punished.

You were young and still believed.

You stayed up until 11:00 p.m. that night

waiting for an announcement of an indictment,

and when instead

it was announced that there was none,

you said, "I got to go." (CHUCKLES)

And you went into your room,

and I heard you crying.

I came in five minutes after, and I did not hug you,

I did not comfort you.

I thought it would be wrong to comfort you.

I did not tell you that it would be okay

because I never have believed that it would be okay.

What I told you

is what your grandparents tried to tell me.

That this is your country, that this is your world,

that this is your body.

And that you must find some way to live

within the all of it.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(STUDENTS RECITING PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE)

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

To be Black in the Baltimore of my youth

was to be naked before the elements,

before all the guns, fists, and knives, crack,

rape, and disease.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The nakedness is not an error.

The nakedness is the intended result of policy.

The system makes your body breakable.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

I was 11 years old

standing in the parking lot in front of the 7-Eleven

and I was watching a crew of older boys

standing near the street.

It was just before 3:00 in the afternoon.

I was in sixth grade, and school had just gotten out.

It was not yet the, uh, fighting weather

of the early spring. (CHUCKLES)

I focused in on the light-skinned boy

with the long head and small eyes.

He was scowling.

He reached into his ski jacket...

and pulled out a gun.

I recall this in the slowest motion

as though it was a dream.

There the boy stood with the gun brandished,

which he slowly untucked, tucked, then untucked once more.

And in his small eyes, I...

I saw this surging rage

that could in an instant erase my body.

The boy did not shoot.

(SCOFFS) He did not need to shoot.

He had affirmed my place in the order.

He had let it be known how easily I could be selected.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

JHARREL JEROME: West Baltimore...

where children regularly fear for their bodies.

Who knew what brought that knowledge. I mean...

the projects, a drunken stepfather,

a... older brother concussed by the police,

a cousin pinned in a city jail.

(SCOFFS)

Somewhere out there...

-(CHILD GIGGLING) -...past the asteroid belt,

there were other worlds where children did not fear.

(SCOFFS)

I came to understand that

my portion of the American galaxy

is Black.

And the other portion is not.

I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a...

profound cruelty,

a... irrepressible desire

to unshackle my body and escape.

♪ ("BLACK" BY BUDDY FT. ASAP FERG PLAYING) ♪

♪ Black on black Black, my thoughts so black ♪

♪ Black, black on black My skin is so black ♪

♪ I'm rockin' that Black on black ♪

-♪ It's black, black ♪ -♪ Black rims On these black wheels... ♪

ANGELA BASSETT: I knew there was this other world

that was suburban and endless,

organized around pot roast, pies, sundaes,

and small toy trucks loosed in wooded backyards.

I have seen that dream all my life.

It is perfect houses with perfect lawns,

Memorial Day cookouts and driveways,

treehouses and Cub Scouts.

The Dream.

Smells like peppermint,

but tastes like strawberry shortcake.

♪ (CHIMING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The Dream seemed to be the pinnacle,

to grow rich and live in one of those

disconnected houses out in the country,

in one of those small communities,

one of those cul-de-sacs with its gently curving ways,

where they staged teen movies and built tree houses,

and in that last lost year before college,

teenagers made love in cars parked by the lake.

The Dream seemed to be the end of the world for me,

the height of American ambition.

What more could possibly exist beyond the dispatches,

beyond the suburbs?

♪ (DISCORDANT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

For so long, I've wanted to escape into the Dream,

to fold my country over my head like a blanket.

But this has never been an option...

because the Dream rests on our backs,

the bedding made from our bodies.

And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists

by warring with the known world,

I was sad for my country.

But above all,

in that moment, I was sad for you.

...start off by saying that I don't feel very good today.

I don't feel very good

because I walked down those steps

and I saw people screaming,

jumping up and down, throwing Frisbees

when there's a war going on.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ANGELA DAVIS: I just wanna know, what were people

out here celebrating?

What is there to celebrate?

For everybody who believes it, and can say it,

and can fight for it, all power to the people.

(APPLAUSE)

YARA SHAHIDI: See, I was a curious child,

but the schools were not concerned with curiosity.

They were concerned with compliance.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

SHAHIDI: Every February, my classmates and I

were herded into assemblies

for a ritual review of the Civil Rights Movement.

Our teachers urged us towards the example of freedom marchers,

Freedom Riders, and Freedom Summers.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

The month could not pass without a series of films

dedicated to the glories of being beaten on camera.

The firehoses that tore off their clothes

and tumbled them into the streets.

They seemed to love the dogs that tear their children apart,

the tear gas that clotted their lungs.

They seemed to love those terrorists.

DAVIS: The world had no time

for the childhoods of Black boys and girls.

I sensed the schools were drugging us

with false morality.

Why were only our heroes non-violent?

Why are they showing this to us?

Why are they showing this to us?

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

If I could've chosen a flag back then,

it would've been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X

dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling,

one hand parting a window shade...

DAVIS: ...the other holding a rifle.

'Cause that portrait communicated

everything I wanted to be.

Controlled, intelligent...

DAVIS: ...and beyond the fear.

SHAHIDI: See, I loved Malcolm.

Malcolm never lied.

DAVIS: Unlike the world of dreamers...

SHAHIDI: ...he was unconcerned with making the people

who believed they were white comfortable.

If you can't do for yourself

what the white man is doing for himself,

don't say you're equal with the white man.

(CROWD AGREEING)

If you can't set up a factory like he sets up a factory,

don't talk that old equality talk.

SHAHIDI: It was a declaration of equality

rooted in the sanctity of the Black body.

DAVIS: You do not give your body

to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs.

Nor to the insidious gravity of the streets.

Black is beautiful,

which is to say that the Black body

is beautiful,

that Black hair must be guarded,

Black skin must be guarded.

Our noses must be protected.

And we must never submit our original self...

SHAHIDI: Our one of one.

DAVIS: ...to defiling and plunder.

"If you're Black, you were born in jail."

SHAHIDI: And I felt the truth of this.

I felt the truth of this in the blocks I had to avoid.

DAVIS: In the times of day when I must not be caught

walking home from school.

In my lack of control over my body.

Perhaps, I, too, might live free.

Perhaps, I, too, might wield the same old power

that animated the ancestors, and speak...

No, act.

...as though my body were my own.

♪ ("REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE" BY PUBLIC ENEMY PLAYING) ♪

♪ Yes, the rhythm, the rebel ♪

♪ Without a pause I'm lowering my level ♪

♪ The hard rhymer Where you never been I'm in ♪

♪ You want stylin' You know it's time again ♪

♪ D the enemy Tellin' you to hear it ♪

♪ They praised the music This time they play the lyrics ♪

♪ Some say no To the album, the show ♪

♪ Bum rush the sound I made a year ago ♪

♪ I guess you know You guess I'm just a radical ♪

♪ Not on sabbatical Yes to make it critical ♪

♪ The only part your body Should be partying to ♪

♪ Panther power on the hour From the rebel to you ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

♪ (POP MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

SUSAN KELECHI WATSON: I was admitted to Howard University,

but formed and shaped by the Mecca.

Now, these institutions are related but not the same.

Howard University is an institution

of higher education concerned with the LSAT,

magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

The Mecca is a machine crafted to capture and concentrate

the dark energies of all African peoples

and inject them directly into the student body.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Whereas most historically Black schools

were scattered like forts in the great wilderness

of the old Confederacy,

Howard was in Washington, DC, Chocolate City,

and thus in proximity to both federal power

and Black power.

(CHANTING)

WATSON: The result was an alumni

that spanned genre and generation.

Amiri Baraka, Thurgood Marshall,

Ossie Davis, Kwame Ture.

The history, the location, the alumni, the Mecca,

crossroads of the Black diaspora.

Out on the Yard, the communal green space

in the center of campus where the students gathered,

I saw everything I knew of my Black self,

multiplied into seemingly endless variations.

(INDISTINCT LAUGHTER AND CHATTER)

WATSON: There were the scions of the Nigerian aristocrats

giving dap to the bald-headed Qs

in their purple windbreakers and tan Timbs.

The California girls turned Muslim,

in their long skirts and hijabs.

And there were the Christian cultists,

and the tabernacle fanatics,

the mathematical geniuses.

It was like listening to a hundred

different renditions of "Redemption Song,"

each in a different color and key,

and overlaying all of this...

was the history of Howard itself.

♪ (ENERGETIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

WATSON: The Mecca, the vastness of Black people

across space and time, could be experienced

in a 20-minute walk across campus,

in the footsteps of Zora Neale Hurston

and Toni Morrison.

And the students who were chopping it up

in front of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall,

where Muhammad Ali had once addressed their fathers

in defiance of Vietnam.

It's not hard to tell a white man's heaven

is a Black man's hell.

WATSON: I saw it in the epic sweep of the students

in front of Ira Aldridge Theater where Donny Hathaway once sang.

The students clapping, singing, stomping, chanting, stepping.

Some of the girls sat in front of the flagpole

with bell hooks and Sonia Sanchez

in their straw totes.

Some of these boys, with their new Yoruba names,

beseeched these girls by citing Frantz Fanon.

Some of them were Panamanian, Bajan,

some of them from places I'd never even heard of,

but all of them were hot and incredible.

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

I'd take a break from my studies,

come out to the Yard, and I'd imagine Malcolm

in his cell, studying the books.

I felt bound by my ignorance...

by the questions that I hadn't yet understood.

I wanted to pursue things, to know things.

The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me.

The Black world was expanding before me,

and I could see now that that world

was more than just a photonegative

of that of those who believe that they are white.

Black people, who embody all physical varieties

and-- and life stories,

we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitan.

The Black diaspora wasn't just our own world

but, in so many ways,

it became the Western world itself.

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

(CROWD CHEERING)

CHADWICK BOSEMAN: The light of new realization

shines on you today.

When completing a long climb, one first experiences dizziness,

disorientation, and shortness of breath

due to the high altitude.

But once you become accustomed to the climb, your mind opens up

to the tranquility of the triumph.

Howard's legacy is not wrapped up

in the money that you will make,

but the challenges that you choose to confront.

As you commence to your past, press on with pride

and press on with purpose.

God bless you.

I love you, Howard.

(CROWD CHEERING)

Howard forever.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

♪ (APPLAUSE FADES) ♪

♪ (SOFT PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(GIGGLING)

MAHERSHALA ALI: My second year at Howard, uh...

I fell hard for her.

A lovely girl from California,

who was then in the habit of floating over the campus

in a long skirt and headwrap.

Her father was from Bangalore.

And where was that?

I remember my ignorance.

I remember watching her eat with her hand

and feeling wholly uncivilized with my fork.

(CHUCKLES)

I remember her going to India for spring break

and returning with the bindi and photos

of her smiling Indian cousins.

(LAUGHS) I told her, "Nigga, you Black."

Because that's all I had back then.

In my small apartment, she kissed me

and the ground opened up.

How many awful poems did I write about her?

(CHUCKLES)

She was to me a galactic portal off this bound and blind planet.

She held the lineage of other worlds

in the vessel of her Black body.

I fell again, a short time later,

and in a similar fashion, for another girl.

Tall with flowing dreadlocks.

She was raised by a Jewish mother

in a small town, nearly...

all-white in Pennsylvania,

and now, at Howard, ranged between women and men,

asserted this with pride. I was amazed.

This was something Black people did?

She taught me to love in new ways.

I grew up in a house where there was--

it was drawn between love and fear.

There was no room for softness.

But this girl revealed something that love could be soft,

that soft or hard, love was an act of heroism.

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

ALI: I fell in love at the Mecca one last time.

Lost my balance and all my boyhood

under the spell of a girl from Chicago.

This was your mother.

I stood with a blunt in one hand,

a beer in the other.

I inhaled, passed it off...

to the Chicago girl.

And when I brushed her long elegant fingers,

I shuddered a bit from the blast.

She brought the blunt to her plum-painted lips, pulled,

exhaled,

then pulled the smoke back in.

Watching this display of smoke and flame,

and already feeling the effects, was...

I was lost, running.

Wondering what it must be to embrace her,

to be exhaled by her, to return to her,

and leave her high.

She was the kind of Black girl who'd been told as a child

that she'd better be smart

because her looks wouldn't save her.

Told as a young woman that she was really pretty

for a dark-skinned girl.

There was all about her a knowledge

of cosmic injustices,

the same knowledge I'd glimpsed all those years ago,

watching the golden-haired boys with their toy trucks

and football cards and...

and dimly perceiving the great barrier

between the world and me.

Nothing between us was ever planned,

not even you.

We summoned you out of ourselves,

and you were not given a vote.

You deserved all the protection we could muster.

There was before you, and then there was after.

And in this after...

you're the God I never had.

I submitted before your needs,

and I knew then that I must survive

for something more than survival's sake.

I must survive for you.

You...

Born in August.

♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JOE MORTON: Son, the struggle is in your name, Samori.

You were named for Samori Touré,

who struggled against the French colonizers

for the right to his own Black body.

He died in captivity,

but the profits of that struggle are ours,

even when the object of our struggle

escapes our grasp.

None of us were promised to end the fight on our feet,

fists raised to the sky.

We could not control our enemy's number,

strength, nor weaponry.

We did not lay down the direction of the street.

But despite that, we could and must fashion

the way of our walk.

And that is the deeper meaning of your name.

That the struggle, in and of itself, has meaning.

(SIRENS WAILING)

LAWRENCE CROSBY: Okay. Now I'm getting pulled over.

They gonna pull me over. See? I knew it was gonna happen.

-(SIRENS WAILING) -(POLICE RADIO BEEPS)

(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)

DISPATCHER: Seward and Sherman, we've got a Black male,

black hoodie, five foot ten, 165,

just broke into a black four-door vehicle.

Vehicle's located on Seward at Sherman.

(SIRENS WAILING)

OFFICER 1: Vehicle confirmed at St. Mark's Church.

OFFICER 2: We're arriving at St. Mark's Church. Hold here.

MAN 1: Gotta paint our garbage door again.

♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Shortly before you were born, I was pulled over

by the PG County Police,

the same police that the DC poets warned me of.

They approached both sides of the car,

shining their flashing lights through the windows,

took my identification, and returned to the squad car.

I sat there terrified. (SIGHS)

POLICE OFFICER: The reason I pulled you over,

your brake lights are out.

So you only have one activated-- active brake light,

and that's gonna be your passenger...

Do you have your license and insurance?

I knew the PG County Police had killed Elmer Clay Newman,

claimed that he'd rammed his own head into the wall

of the jail cell.

RUDY SAMUELS: Step out for what? Sir, no...

I knew they shot Gary Hopkins,

then said he'd gone after the officer's gun.

I knew they beat Freddie McCollum half-blind,

then blamed it on a collapsing floor.

SANDRA BLAND: I'm in my car. Why do I have to put out my cigarette?

BRIAN ENCINIA: Well, you can step on out now.

-SANDRA: I don't have to step out of my car. -ENCINIA: Step out of the car.

SANDRA: Other than to identify myself--

ENCINIA: Step out or I will remove you.

I had heard reports of officers choking mechanics,

shooting construction workers,

slamming suspects through glass doors of shopping malls.

I knew that they did this with regularity.

VICTORIA GOODWIN: You gonna shoot me? He's got a gun,

-and he's gonna shoot me. -Get out of the car now.

I knew they shot at moving cars,

shot at the unarmed, shot through the backs of men

then claimed it'd been they who had been under fire.

At this point in American history,

no police department have fired their guns

more than that of Prince George's County.

FBI has opened multiple cases. Sometimes within the same week.

The police chief was rewarded a raise.

KENDRICK SAMPSON: I replayed all this

sitting there in my car,

in their clutches.

Better to be shot in Baltimore,

where there was the justice of the streets.

Someone might call the killer to account.

But...

But these officers had my body.

MJ RODRIGUEZ: Had my body,

could do whatever they pleased, and should I live to explain,

this complaint would mean nothing.

The officer returned.

He handed me back my license.

He gave no explanation of the stop.

(SIGHS)

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

(CAR ENGINE REVS)

(DOOR CLOSES)

GREG ALVEREZ REID: That September, I picked up the Washington Post

and saw that the PG County police

had killed again.

I could not help but think that this could've been me.

And holding you, a month old by then...

I knew that such loss would not be mine alone.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I scanned the headline.

Their atrocities seemed so common back then.

The story spread into a second day,

and reading slightly closer,

I saw that it was a Howard student

who had been killed.

Then, on the third day, a photo appeared with the story,

and I glimpsed at

and then focused on the portrait.

And I saw him there,

frozen in the amber of his youth.

His face was lean, brown, and beautiful,

and across that face, I saw the open, easy smile

of Prince Carmen Jones.

I know I had love for this boy, Prince Jones,

which is to say I would smile whenever I saw him,

I felt the warmth when I was around him,

and was slightly sad when the day came

to trade dap and for one of us to go.

He was kind,

and he seemed to have a facility with everyone and everything.

This can never be true, but there are people

who pull the illusion off without effort.

And Prince was one of them.

A boy about whom I think of every day,

and about whom I expect to think of every day

for the rest of my life.

Because when the young are killed,

they are haloed by all that was possible,

all that was plundered.

I can only say what I saw, what I felt.

I think I stumbled back.

I think I told your mother what I'd read.

What I remember for sure is what I felt.

Rage.

And the old gravity of West Baltimore.

The gravity that condemned me to the schools,

the streets, the void.

Prince Jones had made it through,

and still they had taken him.

And even though I already knew

I would never believe any account

that justified this taking, I sat down to read the story.

There were very few details.

He'd been shot by a PG County officer,

not in PG County, not even in DC,

but somewhere in Northern Virginia.

Prince had been driving to see his fiancée.

He was killed yards from her home.

And the only witness to the killing of Prince Jones

was the killer himself.

The officer had been dressed like

an undercover drug dealer.

He'd been sent out to track a man

whose build was five foot four and 250 pounds.

We know from the coroner

that Prince's body was six foot three and 211 pounds.

The officer claimed that Prince had tried

to run him over with his Jeep, and I knew...

prosecutors would believe him.

We know that the authorities charged

with investigating the shooting

did very little to investigate the officer

and did everything in their power

to investigate Prince Jones.

This investigation produced no information

that would explain why Prince Jones

would suddenly shift his ambitions

from college to cop killing.

This officer...

given maximum power...

bore minimum responsibility.

(VOICE BREAKS) He was charged with nothing.

He was punished by no one.

He was returned to his work.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MORTON: Son...

you know now the police have the authority

to destroy your body.

It does not matter

if it originates from a misunderstanding,

it does not matter if the destruction springs

from a foolish policy.

Sell cigarettes without the proper authority,

and your body can be destroyed.

Turn into a dark stairwell, and your body can be destroyed.

The destroyers will rarely be held accountable.

Mostly, they will receive pensions.

This is common for Black people.

This is old for Black people.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪

OLIVIA WASHINGTON: Mom, they sent

the killer of Prince Jones back to his work

because he was not a killer at all.

(SCOFFS) He was...

He was a force of nature,

a helpless agent of our world's physical laws.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

PAULETTA WASHINGTON: It occurred to me that...

you would not escape,

that there were awful men who had laid plans for you.

(SCOFFS) And I could not stop them.

OLIVIA: Black people love their children

with a... a kind of obsession.

PAULETTA: You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.

I think we'd rather kill you ourselves

before seeing you killed

by the streets that America made.

It was only after you that I understood this love,

that I understood my mother's grip.

She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me,

that all of me could be shattered,

and all of her legacy

spilled upon a curb like bum wine.

OLIVIA: Think of Prince Jones.

PAULETTA: Think of all the embraces,

all the private jokes,

customs, greetings, names, dreams,

all the shared knowledge and capacity of a Black family

injected into that vessel of flesh and bone.

OLIVIA: Think of surprise birthday parties,

the daycare, racetracks, and model trains.

Think of World Book and Childcraft.

PAULETTA: Credit cards used for vacations,

checks written for family photos.

OLIVIA: Think how that vessel was taken,

shattered on the concrete.

PAULETTA: And no one would be brought to account

for this destruction.

♪ (DRUM MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

This entire episode took me from fear to rage,

fire for the rest of my days.

Most of us drink our travesties straight,

-smile about it. -♪ (DRUM RIFF) ♪

I wrote about the history of Prince George's police.

Here's what I knew.

The officer that killed Prince Jones was Black.

The politicians that empowered that officer, Black.

Black politicians, twice as good, unconcerned.

By then, the internet had bloomed.

That must strike you as novel.

All your life, whenever you've had a question,

you typed that question on the keyboard

and within seconds, the flood of potential answers.

I remember typewriters,

the dawn of the Commodore 64,

days when the song that you love would have its moment

on the radio and then disappear into nothing.

My curiosity, in the case of Prince Jones,

opened up a world of newspaper clippings,

histories, and sociologies.

I called politicians, questioned them,

was told that the citizens would rather ask

for police support than complain about brutality,

told that the Black citizens were comfortable,

had "a certain impatience with crime."

I'd seen these theories before, back in Moorland.

I knew these theories, even in the mouths

of Black people, justified the jails,

argued for the ghettos and the projects,

viewed the destruction of the Black body

as incidental to the preservation of order.

I understood.

What I would not have given back in Baltimore

for a line of police officers patrolling my route to school.

No such officers.

Whenever I saw the police,

something had already gone wrong.

All along I knew

there are some for whom safety is in the schools,

portfolios, skyscrapers.

Ours, men with guns who view us with contempt.

♪ (DRUM STOPS) ♪

Safety was a higher value than justice.

♪ ("WELCOME TO AMERICA" BY LECRAE PLAYING) ♪

♪ Man, I'd die for America I served my time for America ♪

♪ Got shot, shot back Went to war, got back ♪

♪ And ain't nobody give a jack In America ♪

♪ I coulda lost my life Boy, I lost my wife ♪

♪ I can't even get right In my homeland ♪

♪ Cold sweats, whole ticks Paranoia ♪

♪ Lookin' out for a threat In my own land ♪

♪ I was trained in America ♪

♪ How they get up In the planes in America? ♪

♪ Flew 'em Right into the buildings ♪

♪ Takin' out civilians ♪

♪ People gettin' killed In America? ♪

♪ I got a brother In the cemetery now ♪

♪ 'Cause he wanted y'all safe ♪

♪ And everybody want The freedom ♪

♪ But nobody want to hear "About face" ♪

♪ We bled for America ♪

♪ Aye, I was made in America ♪

♪ But what's the point Of talkin'? ♪

♪ A lot of y'all Don't really even care ♪

♪ America ♪

♪ Ta na na na muchawa Muchawa ta na na na... ♪

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

MORTON: Son, I have raised you to respect

every human being as singular,

and you must extend that same respect into the past.

Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh.

It is a particular, specific enslaved woman,

whose mind is active as your own,

whose range of feeling is as vast as your own,

who prefers the way the light falls

in one particular spot in the woods,

who loves her mother in her own complicated way,

thinks her sister talks too loud,

has a favorite cousin, a favorite season,

who excels at dressmaking,

and knows inside herself that she is as intelligent

and capable as anyone.

For this woman, enslavement is not a parable.

It is damnation. It is the never-ending night.

And the length of that night is most of our history.

The enslaved were not bricks in your road,

and their lives were not chapters

in your redemptive history. They were people...

turned to fuel for the American machine.

And it is wrong to claim our present circumstance,

no matter how improved, as the redemption

for the lives of people who never asked

for the posthumous, untouchable glory

of dying for their children.

I love you,

and I love the world, and I love it more

with every new inch I discover.

But you are a Black boy.

You cannot forget how much they took from us,

how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar,

tobacco, cotton, and gold.

♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(WIND BLOWING)

COURTNEY B. VANCE: We lived in a basement apartment in Brooklyn.

I remember borrowing the 200 dollars from Ben,

feeling like a million.

I remember your grandfather coming to New York,

taking me out for Ethiopian.

He handed me a check for 120 dollars.

I pitched to various magazines, no success.

Chana lent me another 200.

I burned it all on a scam.

I delivered food for a small deli.

I was trying to be a writer.

I would take the train into Manhattan.

My weeks felt aimless.

We had arrived two months before September 11th.

Everyone has a story. Here's mine.

Your mother, your aunt Chana, her boyfriend, your mom,

we were on the roof taking in the sight.

-(WIND BLOWING) -(RUMBLING)

Great plumes of smoke.

Everyone knew someone who knew someone who was missing.

But looking out upon the ruins of America,

my heart was cold.

I had disasters all my own.

Prince Jones.

I would never consider any American citizen pure.

I kept thinking about how Southern Manhattan

had always been Ground Zero for us.

They auctioned our bodies down there

in that same devastated,

and rightly named, financial district.

There was once a burial ground for the auctioned there.

They built a department store over part of it.

Bin Laden was not the first man to bring terror

to that section of the city.

I never forgot that.

Neither should you.

♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

(SIRENS WAILING DISTANTLY)

MICHELLE WILSON: There was so much money everywhere.

Money drawing intergalactic traffic through Times Square,

money in the limestones and brownstones,

money out on West Broadway

where white people spilled out of wine bars

with sloshing glasses and without police.

(SCOFFS) They were utterly fearless.

WENDELL PIERCE: I saw white parents

pushing double-wide strollers,

lost in conversation with each other,

while their sons... (SCOFFS)

...commanded entire sidewalks with their tricycles.

The galaxy belonged to them.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

I remember pushing you in your stroller

to the West Village,

instinctively believing you should see more.

I remember feeling ill at ease.

Perhaps you remember the time

we went to see Howl's Moving Castle...

...on the Upper West Side.

You were almost five years old.

The theater was crowded.

-♪ (WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

The theater was crowded, and when we came out,

we rode the set of escalators down to the ground floor.

And as you came off... (CHUCKLES WRYLY)

...you were moving at the speed of a dawdling small child.

(WOMAN AND CHILDREN TALKING INDISTINCTLY)

-And a white woman pushed you... -And said...

-"Come on!" -"Come on!"

Many things now happened at once.

-There was the reaction... -...of any parent...

...when a stranger lays a hand on the body of his or her child.

And there was my own insecurity

in the ability to protect your Black body.

-And more. -And more.

There was my sense...

...that this woman was trying to pull rank.

She would not have pushed a Black child

on my part of Flatbush.

Because she would have been afraid there.

-Would sense... -...if not know...

...that there would be a penalty for such an action.

But I was not on my part of Flatbush.

And I was not in West Baltimore. And I was far from the Mecca.

I forgot all that.

I was only aware that someone had invoked their right

over the body of my son.

So I turned and spoke to that woman.

And my words were hot

with all of the moment and all of my history.

And she shrunk back, shocked.

-A white man standing nearby spoke up in her defense. -(INDISTINCT ARGUING)

His attempt to rescue the damsel from the beast.

He made no such attempt on behalf of my son.

And he was now supported by other white people

in the assembling crowd.

The man came closer.

He grew louder. I pushed him away.

He said, "I could have you arrested."

I didn't care.

I told him this, and the desire to do much more

was hot in my throat.

And this desire was only controllable

because someone standing off to the side there

bearing witness to more fury than he had ever seen in me.

-You. -You.

PIERCE: I came home shook.

It was shame.

Rage.

-"I could have you arrested." -"I could have you arrested."

Which is to say, "I could take your body."

"I could have you arrested."

Which is to say,

"One of your son's earliest memories

will be watching the men who sodomized Abner Louima

and choked Anthony Baez

cuff, club, tase, and break you."

I had forgotten all the rules.

An error as dangerous

on the Upper West Side of Manhattan...

...as on the Westside of Baltimore.

One must be...

...without error here.

Make no mistakes.

PIERCE: But you are human.

You will make mistakes. You will misjudge.

You will yell. You will drink too much.

Not all of us can always be Jackie Robinson.

Not even Jackie Robinson was always Jackie Robinson.

But the price of error is highest for you

than it is for your countrymen.

I am ashamed of how I acted that day.

Ashamed that I endangered your body.

But I am not ashamed of being a bad father.

I am ashamed I made an error...

knowing our errors always cost us more.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

(WIND BLOWING)

OPRAH WINFREY: Here's what I'd like for you to know.

In America, it is traditional

to destroy the Black body.

It is heritage.

There's no uplifting way to say this.

I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spiritual.

The soul did not escape.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings.

The soul was the body that fed the tobacco,

and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton,

and these created the first fruits

-of the American garden. -(BIRD CAWING)

And the fruits were secured

through the bashing of children with stovewood,

through hot iron peeling skin away

like husk from corn.

It had to be blood.

It had to be nails driven through tongue

and ears pruned away.

It had to be the thrashing of kitchen hands

for the crime of churning butter at a leisurely clip.

It could only be the carriage whips, tongs, iron pokers,

handsaws, stones, paperweights,

whatever might be handy to break the Black body,

the Black family,

the Black community,

the Black nation.

For the men who needed to believe themselves white,

the bodies were the key to a social club,

and the right to break the bodies

was the mark of civilization.

And that right has always given them meaning,

has always meant that there was someone

down in the valley

because a mountain is not a mountain

if there is nothing below.

You and I, my son, are that below.

That was true in 1776.

It is true today.

There is no them without you.

And without the right to break you,

they must necessarily fall from the mountain,

lose their divinity, and tumble out of the Dream.

They would have to determine how to build their suburbs

on something other than human bones,

how to angle their jails toward something

other than a human stockyard.

(METAL GATE CLOSING)

How to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism.

But because they believe themselves to be white,

they would rather subscribe to the myth of Trayvon Martin,

slight teenager,

hands full of candy and soft drinks,

transforming into a murderous juggernaut.

They would rather see Prince Jones

followed by a bad cop through three jurisdictions

and shot down for acting like a human.

They would rather reach out, in all their sanity,

and push my four-year-old son as though he were merely

an obstacle in the path of their too-important day.

It is truly horrible... to understand yourself

as the essential below of your country.

♪ ("THE BIGGER PICTURE" BY LIL BABY PLAYING) ♪

♪ It's bigger Than black and white ♪

♪ It's a problem With the whole way of life ♪

-♪ It can't change overnight ♪ -PROTESTERS: (CHANTING) I can't breathe!

-♪ But we gotta Start somewhere ♪ -(CHANTING) I can't breathe!

-♪ Might as well Gon' head start here ♪ -(CHANTING) I can't breathe!

-♪ We done had A hell of a year... ♪ -(CHANTING) I can't breathe!

It breaks too much of what we'd like

to think about ourselves,

our lives, the world we move through,

and the people who surround us.

The struggle...

the struggle to understand...

is our only advantage over this madness.

The struggle...

is really all I have for you.

I am sorry that I cannot make it okay.

I'm sorry that I cannot save you,

but not that sorry.

Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability

brings you closer to the meaning of life.

The fact is...

I would not have you live like them.

You've been cast into a race

in which the wind is always at your face,

the hounds always at your heels.

You do not have the privilege of living in ignorance.

I'm speaking to you as I always have.

You're growing into consciousness,

and my wish for you is that you feel no need

to constrict yourself

to make other people feel comfortable.

I never wanted you to be twice as good as them.

I have always wanted you to attack every day

of your brief, bright life in struggle.

♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Dear daughter,

I'm telling you this in your 15th year.

JANET MOCK: Not long ago, I was standing in an airport

retrieving a bag from a conveyor belt.

I bumped into a young Black man. I said, "My bad."

Without even looking up, he said, "You straight."

And in that exchange, there was so much

of that private rapport that can only exist

between two particular strangers...

CLIFFORD "T.I." HARRIS: ...of this tribe that we call Black.

In other words, I was part of a world.

I was a part of a world.

Now, to call that feeling racial...

...is to hand over all those diamonds

fashioned by our ancestors to the plunderer.

We made that feeling.

By then, I knew that I wasn't so much bound

to a biological race...

...as to a group of people.

And these people were not Black because of any uniform color

or any uniform physical feature.

They were bound because they suffered

under the weight of the Dream.

The people who must believe they're white

can never be your measuring stick.

I would not have you descend into your own Dream.

I would have you be a conscious citizen...

...of this terrible and beautiful world.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

MAN 2: In the years after Prince Jones died,

I thought often of those who were left

to make their lives in the shadow of his death.

I wondered about Prince's mother.

I searched for her, emailed her,

called, made an appointment to visit.

She was just outside of Philadelphia.

It was a Tuesday.

I seem to recall music.

Jazz.

Gospel.

MAN 2: I thought she'd been crying.

I could not tell.

She was what people once referred to as a lady.

PHYLICIA RASHAD: I escaped the sharecropper life of my father

and all the others around me.

I said to myself, "I am not gonna live like this."

I integrated the high school in my town.

In the beginning, I fought the white children

who insulted me.

In the end, they voted me class president.

(CHUCKLES)

MAN 2: I could feel the power and the presence of Dr. Jones.

I asked about his childhood.

He once hammered a nail into an electrical socket.

Shorted out the whole house.

He once dressed himself in a suit and tie and...

sang "Three Times a Lady."

MAN 2: I asked if she had wanted him to go to Howard.

She smiled, said...

Harvard. And if not Harvard, Princeton.

And if not Princeton, Yale.

And if not Yale, Columbia.

And if not Columbia, Stanford.

He was that caliber of student.

But Prince was tired of having to represent.

MAN 2: I asked if she regretted Prince choosing Howard.

She gasped.

No.

I regret that he is dead.

♪ (GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before.

It was extremely physically painful.

So much so that whenever he came to mind,

all I could do was pray and ask for mercy.

MAN 2: I asked if she expected the police officer

who shot Prince would be charged.

Yes.

MAN 2: She spoke like an American,

with the same expectation of fairness,

even fairness belated and begrudged.

She spoke like a Black woman.

Prince loved to read.

Oh, he loved to travel.

When he turned 23, I bought him a Jeep

with a big purple bow on it.

And I can still see him there...

looking at that Jeep, saying...

"Thank you, Mom."

And that was the Jeep he was killed in.

He had a family.

He was living like a human being.

And one racist act took him back.

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

TAMIKA PALMER:

-(FOOTSTEPS) -(CAR ENGINE STARTING)

-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER) -(SIRENS WAILING)

PALMER: She told me I needed to get to the hospital.

Of course I went down,

and I told them why I were there.

She looked it up. She didn't see her.

So the lady said, "Well, I don't think she's here yet."

PALMER:

PALMER: It's still taped off.

I told the officer there that, you know,

I needed to get in her apartment.

Something was going on with my daughter.

And he told me to hang tight.

So it took another two hours or so for him to come.

He kinda just went on to ask me

if Breonna and Kenny had been having any problems.

And I said, "Absolutely not.

Kenny would never do anything to Breonna."

I said, "Well, where's Kenny?" Like, "I need to talk to Kenny."

And he said, "Well, Kenny's at one of our offices.

He's trying to help us piece together

what happened here tonight."

(RADIO CHATTER CONTINUES)

PALMER:

(CRICKETS CHIRPING)

PALMER: It was about 11:00 the next day.

-(FOOTSTEPS) -(KNOCKING)

He comes over and he says they were about done

and they were wrapping up, and then we would be able

to get in there once they got finished.

And I said, "Where's Breonna?

Why won't anybody say where Breonna is?"

And he said, "Well, ma'am...

she's still in the apartment."

I knew what that meant then.

TA-NEHISI COATES: After I left, I sat in the car,

idle for a few minutes.

I thought of all that Prince's mother

had invested in him.

♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I thought of all that Breonna's mother

had invested in her.

And all that was lost.

I thought of the loneliness that sent Prince to the Mecca,

and how the Mecca could not save him.

How we, ultimately, cannot save ourselves.

Son, we are captured, surrounded by bandits.

This has happened here in our only home.

I do not believe we can stop the Dreamers

because they must ultimately stop themselves.

And still, I urge you to struggle.

Struggle for the memory of your ancestors.

Struggle for the warmth of the Mecca.

Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather,

for your name.

♪ (SOMBER VIOLIN MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

-Dad! -(LAUGHS)

COATES: I thought back on the sit-ins,

the protesters with their stoic faces,

the ones I had scorned for hurling their bodies

at the worst things in life.

(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)

COATES: Perhaps they had known something.

These Black people prostrate before clubs and dogs

were not simply shameful,

indeed were not shameful at all.

They were just true.

♪ ("BLUE" BY MOSES SUMNEY PLAYING) ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ What is crucified In light... ♪

-PROTESTER 1: What do we want? -CROWD: Justice!

-PROTESTER 1: When do we want it? -CROWD: Now!

-What do we want? -CROWD: Justice!

-When do we want it? -CROWD: Now!

♪ Seeks redemption in that... ♪

PROTESTER 2: Our Black bodies are being disposed of

and thrown away like we are nothing.

(SCREAMING)

If you Black, put your hands up. The whole world learns respect

with your hands up. Gotta keep your hands up.

(SHOUTING)

♪ The socially undressed ♪

♪ And hues you are Taught to loathe ♪

♪ Two could become a cloak... ♪

(ALL CHANTING)

PROTESTERS: (CHANTING) Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

♪ Darkness can't grasp ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ The socially undressed ♪

♪ And hues you are Taught to loathe ♪

♪ Two could become a cloak ♪

♪ No shame ♪

♪ Who burns blue in the... ♪

-(SCREAMING) -(SIREN WAILS)

♪ Moonlight Who... ♪

-PROTESTER 3: Hands up! -CROWD: Don't shoot!

-Hands up! -Don't shoot!

♪ Who burns blue... ♪

-PROTESTER 4: Say her name! -CROWD: Breonna Taylor!

-PROTESTER 4: Say her name! -CROWD: Breonna Taylor!

-PROTESTER 4: Say her name! -CROWD: Breonna Taylor!

-PROTESTER 4: Say her name! -CROWD: Breonna Taylor!

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

Son, I think back to our trip to Homecoming.

You and I were at the football game.

We were sitting in the bleachers

with old friends and their children.

(DISTANT CHEERING)

I remember watching a pack of alumni cheerleaders

so enamored with Howard University

that they donned their old colors

and took out their old uniforms

just a little, so they'd fit.

I remember them dancing.

-They'd shake, freeze, shake again. -(CHEERLEADERS CHANTING)

And when the crowd yelled, "Do it, do it, do it!"

A Black woman two rows in front of me,

in her tightest jeans,

stood and shook as though she was not somebody's mama

and the past 20 years had barely been a week.

I remember walking down to the tailgate party.

I saw the entire diaspora around me.

Hustlers, lawyers, Kappas,

busters, doctors, barbers,

Deltas, drunkards, geeks, and nerds.

(LAUGHTER ECHOES)

The DJ hollered into the mic. A girl with him smiled,

tilted her head back, imbibed, laughed.

And I felt myself disappearing into all of their bodies.

The birthmark of damnation faded,

and I could feel the weight of my arms

and I could hear the heave in my breath

and I was not talking then, because there was no point.

That was a moment,

a joyous moment beyond the Dream,

a moment imbued by a power

more gorgeous than any voting rights bill.

This power, this Black power,

originates in a view of the American galaxy

taken from a dark and essential planet.

Black power is the dungeon-side view of Monticello,

which is to say, the view taken in struggle.

The warmth of our particular world is beautiful,

no matter how brief and breakable.

We have made something down here.

They made us into a race.

We made ourselves into a people.

♪ ("AMERICAN HEARTBREAK" BY BLACK THOUGHT FT. LEDISI PLAYING) ♪

♪ Yo, America the ugly ♪

♪ This country is deep To say the least ♪

♪ As from Louisville, Kentucky To LA to the East ♪

♪ Where the race been on ♪

♪ But recently I've been making peace ♪

♪ With the fact Black bodies are worth ♪

♪ More if they're deceased ♪

♪ Or trapped in a 9 by 12 Awaiting our release ♪

♪ Not taking it upon ourselves ♪

♪ To break away and teach The next new crop ♪

♪ Before they face The next few cops ♪

♪ 'Cause a traffic stop At night alone ♪

♪ Could get you popped ♪

♪ Nina Simone sang What's the matter With you, rock? ♪

♪ Is it my hip-hop? ♪

♪ And what's the matter With Tupac? ♪

♪ We will finish the journey From Mecca ♪

♪ The pilgrimage Build bridges ♪

♪ Over burial grounds They filled with us ♪

-♪ Oh, America ♪ -♪ I grimaced upon A photo I found ♪

♪ A still image of a friend ♪

♪ Who said to lean on him Like Bill Withers ♪

-♪ I wish he was still with us ♪ -♪ Oh, America ♪

♪ They issue moratoriums On the truth ♪

-♪ And label us Revisionist historians ♪ -♪ Oh, America ♪

♪ Changing the point of origin And all the events ♪

♪ Any prince With some kind of sense ♪

-♪ Is all they're against ♪ -♪ Oh, America ♪

♪ For generations They've shown us ♪

♪ That the American Modus operandi's ♪

♪ To hold us, control us And try to fold us ♪

-♪ Ooh, America ♪ -♪ Watch your body ♪

♪ Not gon' bring me down Today ♪

♪ Don't want to see another American heartbreak ♪

♪ Oh, you can't keep me down ♪

♪ Oh, America ♪

♪ Yeah, watch your body for me ♪

♪ I wasn't built to break ♪

♪ I won't be another American heartbreak ♪

♪ My soul you won't take ♪

♪ You can't keep me down ♪

♪ The beast brand is strong To each man his own ♪

♪ For every Tamika Mallory And Nikole Hannah-Jones ♪

♪ Get up like Jalen Rose So they don't stand alone ♪

♪ Leaders understand the codes Pawns do what they're supposed ♪

♪ The part that's hard as stone Is for you to make it home ♪

♪ If I perish When you're grown ♪

♪ I want you To take the throne ♪

♪ But when driving You a target ♪

♪ Don't be talking On the phone ♪

♪ You a alien, you might as well Be walking on the moon ♪

♪ When you walk into a room Never shrink so you can fit in ♪

♪ Your beauty And your brilliance ♪

♪ Ain't built To keep it hidden ♪

♪ Your path more like the vision Of Richard Wright ♪

♪ Was written too long ago To give in ♪

♪ Too strong to be forbidden ♪

♪ So whether saint or sinner Here's the tenor like Kamasi ♪

♪ I'm from the kind of posse That's down with Ta-Nehisi ♪

♪ Clowns can try to box me ♪ ♪ Their hate can never stop me ♪

♪ I'm a product Of American heartbreak ♪

♪ But watch me ♪

♪ I'm still a problem Lifting my wings ♪

♪ Despite the system That vilified the victim ♪

♪ I'm still alive and kicking ♪

♪ I'm a striver, survivor A husband and a father ♪

♪ From the bloodline of kings ♪

-♪ I move differently ♪ -♪ Oh, America ♪

♪ Watch your body ♪

♪ Not gon' bring me down today ♪

♪ Don't wanna see another American heartbreak ♪

♪ Oh, you can't keep me down ♪

-♪ Oh, America ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪

-♪ Watch your body for me ♪ -♪ I wasn't built to break ♪

♪ I won't be another American heartbreak ♪

♪ My soul you won't take ♪

♪ You can't keep me down ♪

♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪

♪ ("FALLEN STARS FLYING" BY NAS PLAYING) ♪

♪ Black youth flyin' Fallen stars ♪

♪ Black youth flyin' Fallen stars flyin' ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof ♪

♪ Nowadays, Stayin' real is a loss ♪

♪ So I pray for them ♪

♪ Heavy gold chains Of our laws ♪

♪ Body language boss ♪

♪ On this highly Dangerous course ♪

♪ Between the streets And up north ♪

♪ Can't expect Pray the angels direct my walk ♪

♪ I just talked with Big Homie Up in federal court ♪

♪ He was double crossed ♪

♪ Nowadays Stayin' real is a loss ♪

♪ 'Cause cowards prey On niggas with good hearts ♪

♪ So I pray for them They violate this way ♪

♪ I got the K for them But I refrain from ♪

♪ Doin' Satan's work ♪

♪ We doin' wrong Takin' our face off Earth ♪

♪ Black victory, I envision Tiffany blue coupes ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof, Black youth ♪

♪ What's the science, man We the fallen stars flyin' ♪

♪ Black youth, flyin' ♪

♪ Fallen stars Black youth, flyin' ♪

♪ Fallen stars, flyin' ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof ♪

♪ Nowadays Stayin' real is a loss ♪

♪ So I pray for them ♪

♪ When you a strong Stand-tall solider ♪

♪ They lean on you Expectin' you not to fall over ♪

♪ Like you never feel pressure Like you made of steel ♪

♪ So I absorb your pain I like to see you chill ♪

♪ But this shit Start weighin' on me ♪

♪ Liftin' you up Without a day off, homie ♪

♪ It's gettin' hard Plus the haters on me ♪

♪ I met a young queen A little girl ♪

♪ Asked for my autograph ♪

♪ She said my verse From "Black Girl Lost" ♪

♪ Made her find her way ♪

♪ She says she got Tatted wings on her back ♪

♪ So when she wants She can fly away ♪

♪ Black youth, flyin' Fallen stars ♪

♪ Black youth, flyin' Fallen stars, flyin' ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof ♪

♪ Nowadays Stayin' real is a loss ♪

♪ So I pray for them Black youth ♪

♪ Flyin', fallen stars Black youth, flyin' ♪

♪ Fallen stars flyin' Black youth ♪

♪ Flyin' high, fly high Fallen stars flyin' ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof ♪

♪ So I pray for them ♪

♪ Pray for them ♪

♪ Pray for them ♪

♪ Pray for them Black youth ♪

♪ Fallen stars flyin' ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof ♪

♪ Nowadays Stayin' real is a loss ♪

♪ So I pray for them Black youth ♪

♪ Fallen stars Black youth ♪

♪ Fallen stars Black youth ♪

♪ Flyin' high, fly high ♪

♪ Angels pop out the hood Like poof ♪

♪ So I pray for them ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪