All language subtitles for What Killed Michael Brown_ (en-US)

[soft piano music]

[Shelby] The optic
was just terrible.

A black boy
dead in the street.

Shot by a white policeman.

It was four and a half hours

before they finally
removed the body.

It pointed to
a terrible America,

in which,
on a given August afternoon,

a young black American male

could be shot dead,

as he no more than
walked down the street.

[screaming] Why?
Why did they do it?

Settle down?

That motherfucker
shot my baby, they did!

[shouting] Settle down?

[Lesley]
You don't do a dog like that.

Man, you know how
hard it was for me

to get him
to stay in school and graduate?

You know how many
black men graduate?

-[dog barking]
-[background shouting]

[shouting]
This was an execution!

This was an assassination!

[glass shatters]

-[commotion]
-[shouting]

[man shouting]
What are we fighting for?

I don't want you all
killing my child

because she walked out the door

cuz you were having a bad day.
Walk away motherfucker.

I don't know fully what happened
nor do you.

Our hearts are out there--

Police brutality against
African-Americans is rising.

[woman screams]

We can't have people fearful--

[crowd] We can't have
police officers killing people!

[crowd] Fuck them!

I don't look like I'm,

putting my thumb on the scales,
one way or the other.

[TV presenter] Missouri
is the new Mississippi.

Move! Move!

[Eric Holder] We have determined
that there is cause

for the Justice Department
to open an investigation.

[crowd chanting] Fight back!

Everybody want me to be calm

but you know how
them bullets hit my son.

No probable cause exists

to file any charge
against Officer Wilson.

Burn this motherfucker down!
Burn this bitch down!

[crowd shouting]

[jazz music]

[Shelby]
But what was more remarkable

than the tragedy itself

was the explosion of controversy

that surrounded it.

Black militants of every stripe,
national black leaders,

politicians,

mainstream media, cable news,

even the President

and the Attorney General
of the United States

all became players
in the Ferguson story.

Yet in Chicago, my hometown,

in the year 2016...

seven hundred and sixty two
young blacks

were shot and killed.

Three thousand were wounded,

largely by gunfire
from other young blacks.

All this killing,

all this loss of life,

did not garner as much attention

as the shooting of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, Missouri.

[Shelby] I have studied and
thought about race all my life.

I was born on
the south side of Chicago

to parents who met and married

in the Civil Rights Movement
of the early 1940's.

One of my earliest memories

is of my parents
leading a year-long boycott

of my segregated school
in the 1950's.

The first such boycott,
north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Civil rights activism

was my family's mission.

This background positioned me
to know one overriding truth...

that we human beings
never use race

except as a means to power.

Race is never an end,
it is always a means

and it has no role
in human affairs

except as a corruption.

Whenever racial issues
break into the news,

I am usually overcome by what
I call "racial fatigue".

So on that August evening when
the shooting of Michael Brown

[Shelby] hit the news,

it was as if America was staging
a play I had already seen.

I wanted to ignore it

but I couldn't.

It threatened to show me out
as one of those confused,

self-hating Uncle Toms

that kidded themselves into
believing that racial oppression

was effectively over with.

This was heresy.

And I had become
identified with it.

Yet here was Michael Brown,

an unarmed black teenager
shot dead by a white cop.

Hard to argue
in the face of this,

that blacks have
at last achieved the freedom

to live as individuals.

And yet,

this is what I argue.

Was it really racism
that killed Michael Brown?

[jazz music]

[Shelby] In many ways,
my life as an American

has been a journey through
various racial landscapes.

That journey continues.

When I first heard
of East St. Louis,

it was said to be the poorest
black city in America.

There was almost
a braggadocio in this

that lent excitement
to the name.

I was proud to work here
for three years in the late 60's

as a warrior in President
Johnson's War on Poverty.

I wanted to stop here
on my visit to Ferguson,

just to look around.

I was a black militant
back then.

This was the era of...

Eldridge Cleaver
and Huey Newton,

Stokely Carmichael

and I was a part of that.
I identified with that.

My fellow poverty workers and I

had come here
in a mood of wild hopefulness.

America had essentially
confessed

the evil of its racist past.

The government that
had oppressed us,

only yesterday,
would now engineer our uplift.

I felt that justice in America
was finally unfolding before me

and that my work
in these programs

was the actual
execution of justice.

But in my first year
of teaching,

two of my brightest students
were shot and killed.

The trigger fingers were black.

Life went on.

Back then I had no cynicism
about justice.

It was the word that animated
the civil rights movement

more than any other.

But after three years
in East St. Louis,

I no longer trusted the world.

It hid more than it revealed.

And left too much room
for corruption.

The colleague I shared
an office with

met his literature class only
once a month,

claiming his students learned
more in the streets...

than in books.

Yet we had just won
a 20,000 dollar federal grant,

in 1960's money,

to start a library
for our students.

Black development
was not the focus of justice.

Taking advantage
of white guilt was the focus.

[birds chirping]

Everyone knew everyone.

[woman] And, um...

it had a Mayberry feeling
about it.

Ferguson is just a continuation

of a disenfranchised
African American community.

[Shelby]
This was not what I expected,

given the media's treatment
of Ferguson.

I thought it would look like
an extension of East St. Louis.

But this was charming.

Even bucolic.

[disco music]

[woman] I just don't want to
hear that we're racist.

We've been living
with black people for--

-Were not part of White Flight.
-No.

[Shelby] What I didn't realize
is that over a mile away,

on a parallel street,
was another Ferguson.

The Ferguson where
the shooting took place.

Ferguson is a microcosm
of this country.

For some, it is a friendly,
integrated suburb of St. Louis.

For others,
after the death of Michael Brown

it is the new capital
of American racism.

[crowd shouting]

-[crowd shouting]
-I am, Mike Brown!

Mike Brown, I am!

[woman]
Mike Brown Jr. was a soul.

But someone decided,
named Darren Wilson,

that his life wasn't worth it.

[Shelby]
Today is the fourth anniversary

of Michael Brown's death.

[Michael Brown Sr.]
People don't understand

the pain that we go through.

I deal with a lot of demons
that hurt.

My life it upside down.

I walk around,
I try to smile.

I try not show nobody I got so
much hate and anger in my soul

because
I don't want nobody to think

that I'm just this
angry man walking this earth.

[Shelby] But as the day went on,
it became more of a protest.

They protested
the Ferguson Market

where Brown fought
with the owner

just before his death.

[indistinct shouting]

[Shelby] The store agreed
to virtually all the demands...

but the protesters
then changed their minds.

[woman shouting] I cannot walk

without you being
in my motherfucking face!

[Shelby] At the Ferguson
City Council meeting,

they demanded that
the market be shut down

or given over
to them altogether.

[man] I'm going to stand out
there until that store is over.

And If you're not
going to do your job man,

we going to do it for you.

Not a threat, a promise.

[woman] Yeah, that's right.

[applause]

[Shelby] But there
was something unconvincing

about all these protests.

The anger seemed ritualized.

Almost choreographed.

This is the rectangle of asphalt
that marks the spot

where Michael Brown's body
lay for so long.

Why is it so hard
to see the truth here?

[dramatic music]

[witness] I seen Mike Brown

and his friend walking down
the street,

closer to the curb,

you know, not on the side walk

and my initial thought was,
"Wow," you know,

"that is a big guy right there!"

[officer] Twenty-one,

put me on Canfield,
I'm just getting out the car.

[witness]
I just seen Mike Brown inside

the police officer's window

and it appeared if some sort of
confrontation was taking place.

[witness 2] It looked like,
they was going at it

cause I could see the young man,
you know,

I could see him hitting
at the policeman

and the policeman, you know,
as far as I could tell, was--

he was going like this

and it looked like
he was going for his gun.

[loud gunshot]

[loud gunshot]

[witness 3]
He backed away from the car.

He was standing there
for a minute

then he took off running.

[witness] My initial thought
was that, "Wow," you know.

"Did I just witness this young
guy kill a police officer?"

The officer
had got out of his truck

and he had his gun
down to his side, like that.

[witness 3] He had his gun drawn
and it was down to his side.

The police officer
exited his vehicle

with his weapon drawn

perusing Mike Brown.

[witness 3] He is running
behind him and yelling, "Stop!"

He did not fire at Michael
while he was running away.

[witness 4]
I didn't see him fire,

I didn't even hear
gunshots until later.

He just threw his hands up
and he turned around

and he kind of
put his hands down

and he was like shuffling.

He was just shuffling
back and forth.

He looked like
he was going to raise his hands

at one point, but he didn't.

[witness] I can't say for sure
what sort of body gesture,

I can't fully recall.

All I know is,

it's not a motion
of surrendering,

putting my hands up or anything.

[witness 3] Michael was
shuffling back and forth

like he was confused

and then he started running.

[witness 2] Immediately after
he did, his body gesture.

He came force, you know,
full charge at the officer.

[witness 4]
His hands were balled up.

He has his arms bent towards
his chest and he's running

like, you know,
almost like a tackle running.

[witness 3] I heard him say,
"Get down,"

about two or three times.

[witness 4]
I probably would have,

would have shot him instantly
if he'd charged me like that.

But when he was running back

he was screaming, "Stop, stop,"
and the officer was backing up

as he kept coming closer to him

and he didn't stop.

[gunshots]

[witness] I heard three shots.

Well, I think it was three.

I though he was missing him.

Because me thinking,

if he gets shot,
you know, you gonna go down.

[gunshots]

I don't know how many times
he shot him although,

altogether,

but like you've seen one of
the bullets hit him in his face

cause you've seen like,
the splatter from it.

[Shelby] Think about it.

If you came out
one of these doors

and saw the body
of Michael Brown,

what would you think?

Groups pass on
their identity to their young

by telling cautionary tales.

Watch out for tales.

For blacks,

watch out for whites.

So if you're black
and you see Brown's body,

there is already
a framework of meaning in place.

You don't think so much as
step into that meaning.

And at that moment,

before any evidence
or witness testimony,

all you can see is this victim
of American racism.

[woman shouting]
Do you see a knife?

Do you see anything
that would cause a threat

to this motherfucking
police officer?

They shot that boy
because they wanted to.

No reason, he's on the
ground and they still shot him!

[crowd shouts] No reason!

[crowd] They say he had
his hands up and everything.

And still shot him.
He fell on the ground,

they stood over him
and shot him some more.

[Bishop Giovanni Johnson]
The saddest part is that

if you would just
told them at first

what happened.

Then you would not
get 50 million opinions.

The devil,
start working in people minds.

So now it look like it's racism.

Now it looks like it only
happens to the black people.

And then after
the Mike Brown shooting,

get everybody
around the whole entire country.

He shot again.
Once my friend felt that shot,

he turned around
and he put his hands in the air

and he started to get down

but the officer still approached
with his weapon drawn, and he--

fired several more shots.

[woman]
A young man died before his time

because of brutality
from a different race.

It's racial profiling.

[Pastor Tommy Pierson]
We had got the news that

someone had gotten shot.

We continued our meeting.

Kid getting shot all the time,
so it's...

you know,
no longer an alarming issue.

But when the meeting
was over and we left,

and drove up to Chambers,

we noticed a long line of cars

and a police car
on the back of a tow truck.

[Adolphus Pruitt]
White cop, black kid.

Absolutely, race played a...

significant part
of the reaction.

[rain water]

[Shelby] The story of Ferguson
is quickly shaped

by what I call "poetic truth".

This is a distortion
of the actual truth

that we use to sue for
leverage and power in the world.

It is a partisan version
of reality.

A story line that we put
forward to build our case.

For example, that Michael Brown
was executed is a poetic truth.

[Anthony Shahid shouting]

[Anthony] Put your hands up,
I want your hands all the way up

because this how he was
when he got shot.

-[woman shouts] Yes!
-When he got assassinated!

When he got murdered.

This is how he was,
so we got to do it like this.

Let's keep it real.

When he put his hands up,
the police officer shot him.

Four or five people
told me that.

That's when I started

the "Hands up, don't shoot,"
right there.

[Christopher Arps]
Black people don't see that

as a justified action,

don't see that,
"Hey, he was rushing the cop."

Michael Brown's DNA
is on the cop's gun,

is on the window, you know,

everything points out that
he tried to attack this cop

but there are people
that still think that

Darren Wilson murdered him.

He's down on the car,
doing on his knees, like this,

like, "Bro, don't shoot me.
Bro, don't shoot me".

Dude, shot him
dead in the head, bro.

Then walked up to his body,
shot him four more times.

Looked at his eyes,
paused for a minute.

Shot him four more times.

[Coleman Hughes] There is simply
no way to not have an opinion

on what happened in Ferguson.

And there was almost
no way not to be

swept up in the wave,
that's how powerful it was.

Not affirmatively
expressing your support

for Black Lives Matter
almost lead to suspicion.

-[man shouts] Hands up!
-[crowd chants] Don't shoot!

[TV presenter]
He had his hands in the air.

What is it that you understand
that happened to your grandson?

He went down to his knees and
held his hands up in the air.

The officer continued,
the guy was backing.

He continued shooting,

which makes it an execution.

[all chanting]
Hands up! Don't shoot!

If you want answers,
throw your arms up.

Because that's the sign
Michael was using.

Running around, digging up,
trying to act like

he had a gang sign.

No, he had a surrender sign.

I know that emotions are raw,
right now in Ferguson.

And there are certainly
passionate differences

about what has happened.

[all chanting]
Hands up! Don't shoot!

If you have been wondering when
the events in Ferguson

were going to shift
from a local story

getting some national coverage,

to being
a full-on national story...

well this might be it.

Everyone was now
involved in a homicide.

[intriguing music]

The average citizen
was now involved in a homicide.

The media
was now involved in a homicide.

Police were involved
in a homicide.

You now have skin in the game.

Everybody has skin in the game.

[Shelby] But what was the game
that people had skin in?

The game was essentially
a competition,

between the poetic truth
and the objective truth.

The poetic truth
argued that America

was so intractably racist

it would execute
an unarmed black teen

for merely jaywalking.

This was the America,
that "hands up, don't shoot,"

was meant to protest.

Poetic truth always conflates
the present with the past.

It overlays the present

with an imagery
of past racial persecution.

[Rev. Traci Blackmon]
The killing of Michael Brown,

the state sanctioned killing
of Michael Brown.

There was a blatant disrespect
for the body

of this black boy
that was reminiscent

to Emmett Till.

As one minister said to me,

he said, "Ron, it was almost
like this back in the slavery.

It's like they left the body out
there as a warning for us."

The treatment of Michael Brown
by law enforcement

in front of the whole world

had the same impact

of watching Bull Connor

in Birmingham, Alabama

when he pulled those hoses.

You can never whip these boys

if you don't keep
you and them separate.

I found that out in Birmingham.

[Shelby]
It functions as a tyranny,

thriving more by coercion
than reason.

If whites argue with it,
they're shamed as racists.

If blacks argue,
they're shamed as Uncle Toms.

[James Knowles]
The media couldn't wait to say,

look at this 67 percent
African American town

with a white Republican mayor,
85 percent Democrat.

What's going on?
They made me feel like

I was, you know,
this was South Africa.

It felt like this was apartheid.

Some professionals,
some elderly minorities,

didn't feel that Mike Brown
was right for what happened.

He went in-- they felt
that he went in the store,

he did a certain thing and
this was the repercussion of it.

If an African American person
was seen talking to the police,

or their story lined up

closer to how Darren Wilson's
story was...

they were like
thrown out of their race.

[Shelby] Poetic truth,

always on the run
from objective truth,

colors the Ferguson of today
with its racist past.

It ignores Ferguson's thriving
black middle class

and its ongoing
commitment to integration.

You would hear people talk
about the, you know,

the white racist
Ferguson residents,

and you want to say,

"Well, do you mean the people
that partook in white flight

and left 20 years ago?"

Because you can go back far
enough in Ferguson

one hundred--
at one point this city was

entirely white and it was called
sundown city.

African Americans had to be out
you know, before sun down.

You know, like many communities
in the United States.

And Ferguson consciously
embraced the change.

They started an organization
in the 70's called Proud,

to try and you know,
talk about racial issues.

And so Ferguson really became
kind of a destination city

for successful
African Americans.

[Shelby] Certainly the optics
of tanks and dogs

in today's Ferguson,

invoked images of the 60's.

Implying that the black struggle
against oppression,

is never ending.

[man shouts]
On his knees. Hands up.

[explosions]

They arrived in tanks,
like, and they gonna

shoot us down like animals?

[indistinct background shouting]

-We are from here.
-[background chanting]

[Shelby] By forcing everyone

into roles echoing
Americas racist past.

Poetic truth set the stage
for a power grab.

The Justice Department
has opened an independent,

Federal,
civil rights investigation

into the death of Michael Brown.

It was the...

perfect storm

for a lot of people
and a lot of organizations.

[President Obama]
The Attorney General himself

will be traveling to Ferguson
on Wednesday to meet...

[Adolphus Pruitt]
He's coming to St. Louis,

bring your wood with you.
There's a...

there's a fire going on
and there's opportunity

for it to turn into a bonfire.

He will also be meeting with
other leaders in the community,

whose support is so critical.

Eric Holder
had an opportunity to meet

with myself
and Ferguson officials

and we were told,
not to be there.

Well the irony is he met
with the African American mayors

around Ferguson.

It was at that point

that I knew

that our community wasn't going
to get a fair shake.

[Al Sharpton] And I met
with some of the youngsters

and I said to them,

we gonna try to get

the Justice Department
to come in here.

One of the young men said to me,
"Shelby."

"Yes, I understand Rev Al.
You right, yes.

The Department may be able
to do something but...

we can't talk to the man.

Street law,
we can't talk to the man."

And I looked him in the eye
and I said,

"Have you seen Eric Holder?
We are the man now."

Eric Holder came here

in response to
the death of Michael Brown.

And said he is the
top law enforcement officer

but then he
waded into the politics of race

by saying,
I'm also coming as a black man.

When Mr Holder came to town

and declared, I'm coming here
as a black man...

okay, your agenda
is already set.

It automatically
sends a signal that

Obama administration has taken
sides against the police officer

and against truth.

[Shelby] Eric Holder came
to Ferguson as an envoy

of black power

but there was
no evidence of white racism

in the shooting
of Michael Brown.

-[soft emotive music]
-So where did Holder

get the momentum to go forward?

I think it came
from white guilt.

Since the 60's,

whites have lived
under the accusation

that they are racist.

Thus, there is a compulsion

to prove
their innocence of racism.

This compulsion
is white guilt.

It is not actual guilt,

but the terror
of being seen as a racist.

More than anything,

Holder's mission to Ferguson
was to exploit white guilt.

He needed victims
and he needed racists.

[man] President Obama was under
a lot of pressure from

the Al Sharpton and the Reverend
Jesse Jackson types,

to show some
quote, unquote, backbone.

Find a crime.

Today,
the US Department of Justice

launched a broad investigation--

People consistently
express concerns

stemming from
specifically alleged incidents

from general
policing practices

and from the lack of diversity.

A grand jury
is already investigating

last month's shooting.

This new federal probe
will go far beyond that.

[Shelby]
What did register with Holder

was the escalating violence
within Ferguson itself.

It was clear that
there was an audience

for black rage.

This rage was something
that white Americans

had learned
to buy their way out of.

Holder,
therefore made common cause

with the protesters
to transform an isolated tragedy

into a social injustice.

[Jamie Dennis]
My wife, my kids,

they began these
candle light vigils,

that's how it really
started in Ferguson

for Mike Brown,
it was vigils.

A peaceful vigil
and demonstration last night

turned into rioting
and looting of stores.

[Jamie Dennis]
But, as it persisted,

there were,
like a national fervor

that started
to move into our city.

You had people that,

State Senators,
representatives and activists,

who were legitimately
protesting during the day

and in the early night,

but what'd happen-- you have--
their movement was corrupted

by the outsiders

that were coming in
and throwing Molotov cocktails.

I would say close to over
90 percent were in from outside.

-[interviewer] Ninety percent?
-Over 90 percent.

[TV reporter]
It's becoming a nightly routine

here in Ferguson,

arresting 31 people, saying many
of them were from out-of-state.

Some 32 people being arrested
in Ferguson Sunday night

and the interesting part,
none of them are from Ferguson.

It turned into a frenzy,
if you will.

Of different people, it wasn't
just about Mike Brown Jr.

It wasn't just about justice.

Everybody was feeling like
this was a free for all

to get your grievances out.

The protesters were
just in a rage

and cussing and screaming
and spitting at the police,

this line of police that
just had to keep a stoic face

and were threatening
to follow the officers home

and rape their
wives and daughters.

-[crowd shouting]
-About ten o'clock at night,

there would be,
the protesters out walking

then around ten,
or 10.05 as the news came on,

all of a sudden
these groups would swarm...

[shouting and screaming]

and the more that came,
the more TV cameras came

the more people came and
it really kind of fed on itself.

And then we would be,
once again,

displayed as a racist,
horrible city.

-[dramatic music]
-[Shelby] In King's day,

the protest appealed
to the honor of Americans.

In Holders' s day,
it manipulates their guilt.

If you get hurt,

you get,
you get gas in your eyes,

the word was,

go to Greater St. Marks.

And the protesters
had not had a place,

a home base, if you will,

to come and to set up, um--

the movement would not have
lasted as long as it lasted.

They wanted justice
for Michael Brown

and the Brown family.

That's the first thing.

Now, there were, I mean,
almost everybody had their

perspective of what that justice
should look like.

And so you can't control that,

I mean, there were a lot
of different groups

and they were not
organized together.

The methods they used to fight,
using something a kid does,

when he's between the ages
of two and three.

"I can't rationally talk to you,

I can't agree
to disagree with you,

but I can spit,
bite and kick you,

because I'm a toddler."

So, these young people
took that approach.

"You will not listen to us

so we're gonna blow up
your buildings,

we gonna burn things down."

We want to take the time
to break down racism,

from a philosophical level.

You all did not show up.

I don't care about how it look.

It ain't made for TV.

This ain't your
daddy's civil rights movement.

This ain't your
daddy's civil rights movement.

-[cheering and clapping]
-[speech continues]

Even in the back day,
they did this.

But they did it differently

to get an answer.

But this generation
here feels like

somebody owes them something.

We want, we want this,
we want that.

We want a board of this,
we want a board of that.

Okay, grant you in the day,

I got to keep
going back to the day

because when I heard
somebody say,

"F- Dr. Martin Luther King."

I was through.

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody
Turn me round ♪

- ♪ Turn me round ♪
- [crowd shouting]

♪ Turn me round
Ain't gonna let nobody ♪

♪ Turn me round
I'm gonna keep on walking ♪

♪ Keep on talking ♪

♪ Marching on to freedom land ♪

[crowd shouting]

♪ Turn me round
Turn me round ♪

-♪ Turn me round ♪
-I support Hamas 100 percent.

I am with them
just like I am against you.

- Fuck you.
- ♪ Turn me round ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on walking
Keep on talking ♪

♪ Marching on to freedom land ♪

♪ Turn me round
Turn me round ♪

♪ Turn me round ♪

-[crowd shouting]
-[gunfire then screams]

-[police] Back up!
-[man] Yeah, yeah.

♪ Keep on walking
Keep on talking ♪

[gunfire]

♪ Turn me round
I'm gonna keep on walking ♪

♪ Keep on talking ♪

♪ Marching on to freedom land ♪

We want to know the real story
from Mike Brown, we do.

Everybody does, okay.

But right now the story is,

he shot my son.

That's the story. Okay.

But, here's the thing.

It went from there
to personal stuff.

It went from there
to personal gain.

It went from there
to personal money.

That's how
the movement broke up.

Well, I can't think
of this man's name now,

but he was New York.

He's a million dollar--
I heard different organizations

and the kids got
a wind of the money,

and they went haywire.

And this money is not gonna go
to this young man's family

and it's not going to go
to the community.

So...

[interviewer]
Where's the money coming from?

Everybody poured in
to Ferguson when this happened

from all over the United States,
all over the world.

The sum of stuff people
be asking is unreasonable.

[hesitates]

We want you
to expunge all our tickets.

[chuckles]

This ain't got nothing
to do with your ticket,

this got something to do
with a black boy being killed.

A lot of organizations
was start-ups

and they used this property
to start their organization

and they were getting money.

There was a group
called Hope and Change.

A Center for Hope and Change.

They got some money and
I didn't find out until later

that they got fighting over that
money in front of the church.

Back in the day
when you protesting,

you could be shot,
you were hanged.

If you would notice,

out of all of the police,

all of the military equipment

that were down there
on West Florissant,

not one person lost their life.

[Al Sharpton] ...don't
understand that Michael Brown

does not want
to be remembered for riots.

He wants to be remembered

as the one that made America

deal with how we gonna
police in the United States.

The only reason we even know
about Eric Garner,

or Trayvon, or Michael Brown
is because there was protest.

Protest is not only viable,
it is necessary

because if you cannot
arrest public attention,

you cannot move
the public toward change.

We see Michael
laying on the ground.

America, it's time
to deal with policing.

[Shelby] When Holder
came to Ferguson,

declaring himself
to be a black man,

he followed a formula of power

that Al Sharpton,
among others,

had developed
a generation earlier.

[soft music]

[Moses Stewart] That my son
and his three companions

were at the wrong place
at the wrong time.

That 25 to 30 young white youths

with baseball bats...
attacked him.

One youth had a gun.

My son happened to be
the one in the line of fire.

My son will never
turn this corner again.

Only because of this,
the pigment of his skin.

[Shelby] Thirty years ago,
I interviewed

-a young Al Sharpton.
-[soft music]

It was on the occasion
of another black teen's death

in Bensonhurst, New York.

There was no ambiguity
in Yusef Hawkins murder.

It was white racism,
plain and simple.

[man shouting]
Get out motherfucker.

Get out of here,
you fucking asshole!

Freedom from fucking faggot!
Fuck you! Fuck you!

[Shelby] He was not interested
in only justice.

The murderers were convicted
of their crimes and locked up.

What struck me then was how
Al Sharpton used the limelight

to bring past victimization
into the present.

It wasn't just Yusef Hawkins
who was killed,

it was thousands of blacks,
over the centuries.

The weight of all that history,

was meant to be the
measure of justice due today.

Eric Holder
followed this same formula

with policing in Ferguson.

It wasn't just Darren Wilson
who pulled the trigger,

it was thousands of officers

dating back to the oppressions
of slavery and segregation.

The weight of all that history,

was the measure
of systemic racism today.

As soon as...

you hear of a police officer
involved shooting

it's national news.
It's all over your phones.

But, two people kill each other,
nobody cares.

We care, because we have to go
investigate it.

I have to go tell
that loved one's mother,

"You just lost your
eighteen year old son."

That's not an easy thing to do.

[Shelby] Holder took
Sharpton's formula up a notch.

The iconic Michael Brown
would become the face

of police reform in America.

And the name Ferguson itself,

would embody
the shame of racism.

On the ground,
back in the real Ferguson,

the picture was more complex,
less incriminating.

Once, what was notoriously known
as "white flight" occurred

and everyone started
moving away from the city.

It left
these apartment complexes,

able to be
bought up by speculators

[Terri Harris] who came in
and bought up houses,

and made them
Section 8 housing.

Now you have people living there

who don't have
the money to pay the fines.

[Terri Harris]
It leads to a situation

where they can't pay the fine,

so they don't pay the fine,

then they get pulled over again.

There's a warrant.

That much, I will agree
with Mr. Holder,

that the community
couldn't afford to do it...

to pay the fines.

[Terri Harris]
But, I am fairly certain

that the Ferguson police,

nor any other police department,

are responsible
for the failure to recognize...

the problems
with putting a bunch of...

disenfranchised people together,
regardless of race.

Poverty is... a damning thing.

[Terri Harris]
I think that if you're poor

and you're black,

and the only time
you see the police,

is when
somebody's going to jail,

or something bad
is happening,

and if all the adults
are telling you that they are

doing this to you
because you're black,

what stick would you
have to measure by,

to think
something other than that?

I can tell you as someone raised
in a poor white neighborhood,

when the police
came to our house,

it wasn't good news either.

I don't know how long
the investigation will be.

I don't know how long
the journey will be.

But I know
how this story gonna end.

[crowd cheering]

[Al Sharpton]
The first will be last.

The last will be first.

The lion and the lamb
gonna lay down together.

And God will, God will.

God will make a way
for His children.

I've been
to the end of the book.

Justice is gonna come.

Justice is gonna come.

Justice is gonna come.

[crowd cheering and clapping]

[Shelby] But does
Reverend Sharpton's justice

apply to Darren Wilson?

The police officer
who shot Michael Brown?

For Sharpton, the word justice
implies a reckoning.

Some definitive achievement
of fairness.

Is there to be
a reckoning for Darren Wilson?

[Darren Wilson] ...as we're
taught, let me see your hands.

[interviewer] As you know, some
of the eye witnesses have said,

that when at that moment
that he turned around,

he turned around
and put his hands up.

That would be uncorrect,
incorrect.

-No way?
-No way.

So, you say he starts to run,

does some steps,
starts to come toward you.

And?

At that time, I gave myself
another mental check-out.

You know, can I shoot this guy?
Legally, can I?

And the question I answered
myself to was, "I have to."

If I don't, he will kill me
if he gets to me.

He's already
overpowered me once.

If he gets to me,
I will not survive.

Even though he is like
35, 40 feet away?

[Darren Wilson] Once he's
coming in that direction,

if he hasn't stopped yet,
when's he gonna stop?

So you've already fired twice,
he starts to come towards you.

After, he's coming at me
and I decide to shoot,

I fired a series of shots
and paused.

What did you see?

I noticed at least one
of them hit him.

I don't know where but I saw
his body kind of flinch a little

and after that I paused

and again yelled, you know,
"Stop, get on the ground,"

giving him
the opportunity to stop.

And he ignored all the commands
and he just kept running.

And so,
after he kept running again,

I shot another series of shots.

At least one of those hit him
because I saw the flinch.

And he stopped.

I stopped, correction
I stopped and I said,

you know, "Get on the ground,
get on the ground."

Well this time
he's about 15 feet away.

So I start back peddling
because he's getting too close

and he's still
not stopping after--

-You were back peddling?
-Yes, away from him,

because I was like, he's already
running through these shots,

I mean he-- they weren't phasing
him, it didn't matter to him.

He was looking through me.
The face,

and the image he was presenting
was just,

that I wasn't even there.

What did you see in that face?

Aggression, you know.
There was,

there was nothing.

It was like hollow
just looking through me.

And as he gets to that 15 feet,

after I fired the second round
of shots,

he gets
to about eight to ten feet,

and as he does that, he kind of
starts laying forward,

like he's going to tackle me.

And eight to ten feet is close.

If he is going to tackle me,

he's going to
tackle me at that point.

And I looked
down my barrel of my gun

and I fired and what I saw

was his head
and that's where it went.

-Right in the top of his head.
-Yes.

Some witnesses have also
said that

they actually saw you
stand over him

-and shoot him on top his head.
-That would be incorrect.

The Brown family came out
with a statement last night

where they said,
"We are profoundly disappointed

that the killer of our child

will not face the consequences
of his actions."

What do you think
when you hear that?

I think
those are grieving parents

who are mourning
the loss of their son.

What do you want to say to them?

I'm sorry their son
had to lose his life.

-And it had to be.
-Had to.

[Shelby] I don't believe racism
drove Darren Wilson

to shoot Michael Brown.

I think the motive was so simple

as to be almost unbelievable.

He feared for his life.

[Eric Holder] ...in an 87 page
report documenting our findings

and our conclusions
that the facts do not support

the filing of criminal charges
against Officer Darren Wilson.

The DOJ's investigation

quote, "Forced me to deal
with two uncomfortable truths.

Brown never surrendered
with his hands up,

and Wilson was justified
in shooting Brown."

Fellow Americans called me,
I quote,

"a sell-out,"
or I quote, "house Negro".

Other people
said I did it because I wanted,

quote,
"white people to like me,"

or that I quote,
"did it for the money."

No I didn't.

I did it because
it was the right thing to do.

[TV reporter
speaking indistinctly]

[Shelby] But things were
not so simple for Mr. Holder.

As the envoy for Black Power,

he had to erect
a complex edifice

of Justice Department protocols,

Civil rights laws
and media spins,

all in the service
of the poetic truth

that racial persecution

remains the greatest
problem for black Americans.

[Eric Holder] This investigation
found a community

that was deeply polarized.

A community
where local authorities

consistently approached
law enforcement,

not as a means
for protecting public safety

but as a way
to generate revenue.

[Shelby] So how do you argue

that racism explains
the death of Michael Brown

when there is not a shred of
evidence to support that claim?

You point to a gap
between the races

and then you claim that
only racism explains that gap

and nothing else.

You claim that racism
has a will of its own.

[Eric Holder] ...no other basis,
between October 2012

and October 2014

despite making up only
67 percent of the population,

African Americans
accounted for a little over

eighty five percent

of all traffic stops by
the Ferguson Police Department.

A Washington attorney
who contacted me,

he and his firm had done
a lot of work

in the issues of disparities

and how they use
disparagement impact.

And he told me. He said,

"If they
can't make this racial,

there's nothing they can do.

There's nothing
the government can do about me

pulling over
a ton of white people

and writing them
tickets until they're blue.

But if you're doing it
because their race,

now suddenly
the government has...

a reason to be involved."

Ferguson is not an island and...

therefore,
their stats don't work at all.

Ferguson is a community
that is integrated

but our surrounding
neighboring communities

are predominantly
African American,

ninety percent,
ninety five percent.

But they said Ferguson
is 67 percent African American

but we pull over,

eighty percent of our motorists
are African American.

Statistically, who do you think
is driving down the roads?

People from all over
this area come to Sam's,

because there is no grocery
stores, no Walmarts,

nothing in North St. Louis city.

And every one of those people
come to Ferguson to shop.

Our view
of the evidence found, no,

no alternative explanation

for the disproportionate impact
on African American residents

other than implicit
and explicit racial bias.

No other basis.

[mayor] If they don't turn this
into an issue of race,

then they don't have a case.

The people in that community
are no better off than they were

prior to the death
of this young black child.

They're no better off
and everybody knows it.

The change is in itself

validates
they had reason to protest.

Maybe they're
methods of protest,

some that got
violent were wrong.

But clearly they were addressing
something that needed change

otherwise it wouldn't
have started to change.

Let's be clear.

As much as Ferguson
not only cost Ferguson,

but as much as Ferguson
cost this country

[Adolphus Pruitt]
because they were responding

to Ferguson protests
across this country.

People expended dollars.
[chuckles]

If you were to calculate
what it cost this country,

what did the country
get in return?

What did Ferguson get in return?

And I say nothing.

I say nothing.

[soft music]

[Shelby] Failing even to charge
Darren Wilson,

Holder made Ferguson

pay the price
for a racist murder

that was neither racist,
nor a murder.

-[car honking]
-[hubbub of voices]

[Shelby] One of the words most
commonly associated with

the black American experience
is the word justice.

[Jay Kanzler]
To this day, there are people

who blame Ferguson Market

for Michael Brown's death.

Michael Brown had

tried to buy cigarillos
the night before

with pot.

With marijuana.

And the store said no,
we don't deal in marijuana.

Some people want to be angry

at someone
and the police chief changed,

Tom Jackson, he went away

and the players
all kind of went away.

Now who's there to be angry at?

Well, let's pick the store.

[Shelby]
But what kind of justice

did these protesters want?

Eric Holder delivered
his version of justice.

The city and police department
of Ferguson

were placed under
a federal consent decree.

Beyond this, the Brown family
received a reported

1.5 million dollar settlement.

The owners
of the Ferguson Market

met almost all the protesters
original demands.

But for these protesters,
it was still not enough.

[Jay Kanzler]
This is a family business.

They came with little
or nothing in their pockets.

They have built up their store.

They own a number of stores.

That is the American Dream.

And they do this by working 15
hours a day, 7 days a week,

and they do that
for 15 to 20 years.

[Shelby] The poetic truth
of black victimization

had become their identity.

In black anger and outrage,

in protest,
they found themselves.

Sadly the interaction that some
of the protesters have

with the owners of the market,
who happen to be Asian Indian,

is absolutely based in race.

A protester got up
at the podium

and was speaking to the mayor

and said,

"These people
do not belong here.

They are not like you or me.
They are not black or white.

They are Pakistani
and they need to go."

They can get away with this.

Why, I don't know.
Because it's Ferguson.

[Shelby] The poetic truth
entrapped them in the idea

that we blacks,

can win a pay-back from America

that matches
our long suffering in America.

But this will never be.

We will never gain
an entitlement

equal to our suffering.

[soft emotive music]

[Shelby] If it wasn't racism
that killed Michael Brown,

what was it?

I believe Holder's investigation
didn't go deep enough.

The danger in poetic truth

is that it always traps us
into solving the wrong problem.

Many argue that White Supremacy,

and all the customs
and bigotries it gave rise to,

slavery, segregation,
discrimination and so on,

are what led
to Michael Brown's death.

While those forces certainly
played a role,

wasn't it actually
the new liberalism,

coming out of the 60's,

that shaped
the world of Michael Brown?

The enormously seductive power

of post 60's liberalism

was, and is, its promise
to redeem and deliver us

from the evils
of White Supremacy.

This liberalism
was so transformative

that even many conservatives
fell under its sway.

Wasn't this liberalism far more
focused on assuaging white guilt

than on developing blacks?

Back in the 60's, we blacks made
a very bad deal with America.

We demanded
that America help us develop.

But if this was logical,
it was also naïve.

It seduced us
into putting our faith,

right back into the hands
of the same white America

that had oppressed us
in the first place.

We began to live by a formula.

America's racial guilt
was our power.

White guilt
became black power.

Of course there was a catch.

To milk white guilt,

we had to always be victims
of white racism.

White racism
and black victimization

became the heart and soul
of liberal power in America.

During my time working in an
East St. Louis poverty program

we were sometimes asked

to take in a few teenagers

from the infamous
Pruitt-Igoe housing project.

[ominous music]

The mere request
froze us in our tracks.

Located in the
heart of St. Louis,

Pruitt-Igoe was already seen

as a virtual
dehumanization camp.

Blacks were literally
schooled in gang violence,

drug trafficking, prostitution,
gambling and so on.

None of those students
chosen to join us

ever showed up.

This sort of behavior
was new to me back then.

I grew up in an America

that offered
no special support to blacks.

Our fate was in our own hands

whether we liked it or not.

I would have
jumped at a chance

to join a program like
our program in East St. Louis.

But the Pruitt-Igoe kids
blew off what I,

in an America indifferent
to blacks,

would have run to.

The first demand is

that we have effective
civil rights legislation,

no compromise,
no filibuster.

-What do you say?
-[crowd cheers]

[Shelby]
In the politically charged 60's,

the great cultural shift

that separated
their generation from mine,

was the advent of white guilt,

the very engine
of post 60's liberalism.

Our Negro poverty
is not white poverty.

Many of its causes
and many of its cures

are the same.

There are differences.

For the Negro...

they are a constant reminder
of oppression.

For the White...

they are a constant reminder
of guilt.

[Shelby]
This was not actual guilt.

Rather, it was the loss

of moral authority
and legitimacy,

occurred when America,
in the mid 60's,

finally admitted
to its long indulgence

in racism, sexism
and other bigotries.

To win back moral authority,

America took substantial
responsibility

for the advancement
of its former victims

thereby lifting responsibility

off the shoulders of people
like the youth

who never showed up.

[piano music]

In this new era,
the assuaging of white guilt

became more important
than black development.

And this is how white guilt
caused blacks to lose

a degree of agency
over their own fate,

just as they began
to experience real freedom.

[Howard Husock]
There is a direct line from

Pruitt-Igoe to Ferguson.

Pruitt-Igoe
is especially important,

its implosion...

on camera became an iconic
moment in the history

of public housing
in America and the world.

And it seemed to connote

that this program,
which was supposed to

save poor people
and keep them away from slums,

replace slums,
had actually failed.

It was much bigger than housing,

that's what people
have to understand.

It was much bigger than housing,
per se.

[Howard Husock]
This is not an overstatement

to say that public housing
was influenced by socialism.

We can design
an all-inclusive environment

that was going to make your life

better than you
could make it yourself.

There was this specific
census tracts in St. Louis

that were demolished

to make way for Pruitt-Igoe,
were all

occupied by poor black people,

or working class black people.

[loud implosion]

They were
organic black communities.

Many of the houses torn down
were owned by their occupants.

They weren't owned by...
white slum lords and overseers.

[Shelby] Blacks arrived
in St. Louis, en masse,

from the South,
in the year 1900.

Nearly all
had nothing to their names.

The national poverty rate
among blacks

fell from 87 percent in 1940

to 47 percent in 1960.

Entirely on their own,
blacks were moving up.

Howard Husock's research

shows that in 1950

twenty one percent

of all housing units
in this neighborhood

were the property of blacks.

This number exceeded that of the
adjacent white neighborhood

by three percent.

In this neighborhood,

twenty three percent of
the homes had an owner present.

And 460, out of 480 owners,
were black.

Homes here were worth an average
of eight thousand dollars

compared to the city wide
average of 9.2 thousand.

Blacks were on the move upward.

But the powers that
ran St. Louis, at the time,

did not see these properties
the same way as blacks did,

as low rent opportunities
to move up.

They saw only slums.

These powers were guilty
of what's called,

"the snapshot fallacy,"

the erroneous belief
that conditions observed,

at a given moment,
are permanent,

unless the government
intervenes.

[Howard Husock]
Everything is stagnant.

Housing market
isn't going to change.

Their social economic status
isn't going to change.

Therefore we have
to wipe that snapshot away

and replace it with
a gleaming new tower.

[Shelby] The government
destroyed their equity

and created a permanent
black underclass.

This happened
all over America.

[pensive music]

My father,
like many black men

of the great migration
from the South,

wanted equity.

Wow.

Phoenix Village Hall, wow.

My parents
spent a lot of time there...

on one issue or another.

My mother started a baby clinic
in the city hall of Phoenix.

Second Avenue, my Lord.
Let's see.

That's the house.

My mother and father
had equity in that house.

They built up through hard work
and risk taking.

They learned to be electricians.
They learned to be plumbers.

They learned
to be house painters.

I can remember my mother,

on the roof of that house
with tar paper,

tarring it
just before winter came in.

They bought another house.
We worked on that one.

They sold it,
they built up enough equity

in this poor black community

to see them through
to the rest of their lives.

I can remember when
the idea of public housing

began to be talked about
in the 50's.

And I can remember my father
was instantly suspicious.

Did not like the idea.

Took it as something
of a humiliation,

the idea
that the government

would have to step in in order
for him to have a decent life.

He did not like that idea.

A man with nothing more
than a third grade education.

A truck driver all of his life
in the loop of Chicago.

He knew instinctively that,

these things were
possibilities even in the midst

of racial segregation
everywhere.

On our own block,
whites were on this side,

we blacks were on that side.

Did he say,
"Oh my God, that's unfair

and I'm going to wait
for the government program?"

No!

The government had nothing to do
with my family's really slow

gradual movement
upward in American life.

The government
was always a barrier.

Always something that's
disbelieved in our agency,

in our power to make a life.

[Marvin Blake] What you saw
is something more diabolical.

Somewhere along the lines,
you stopped valuing

the minority communities,

you have to look
at it like this.

Slavery actually
brought black people together.

Don't condone it, it shouldn't
have happened, it was horrific.

The holocaust
didn't last that long.

But black families
found a way to survive.

So, even when they migrated
from the South,

to major metropolitan cities,
those families were intact.

When you tell a family

your father
can't be in the household,

you take the leader
of the household out.

Mama, the social worker is here!

[Marvin Blake]
The man-in-the-house rule,

which did so much to destroy
the black family in America,

was an attribute

of Aid to Families
with Dependent Children.

Welfare.

The government
designed a program

that if you're going to get
the assistance that you need,

if you're a woman, you can't
have a man in the house.

You are the gentleman that's
been keeping company here.

Office of Equal Opportunity,
OEO,

set up offices
all over New York,

Chicago and major cities,

that actually recruited
people into the welfare system.

Millions of black folks
poured into the welfare system

over the course
of about five years.

At a time when the
unemployment rate in New York

for black men
was under four percent.

We know that children
need a man in the house,

a woman
needs a man in the house.

We don't insist
people be married.

Do you mean,
you'd have a man move in

if he's not married
to the mother?

-That's right!
-That's immoral.

We're trying
to deal with the realities.

What kind of example is that
to set for the children?

Oh, what kind of example
are you setting right now?

I ain't the government!

We'd love
to see you get married.

Yeah, I bet you would, it would
take the government off the hook

and put me on!

[Lilly Blake] The problem
with that mentality is that

you can actually--
it keeps people in this box.

And not all people, but
whether we realize it or not,

we do practice what we've seen.

And you still see that mindset.

Well, if I work this many hours,

I won't be able to
put my kid in daycare.

I won't be able to
get this assistance.

When the truth is that you
might not need the assistance.

Liberal patronization
is worse than segregation.

Give me an honest bigot.

Because bigotry is external.

But patronizing is internal.

[Howard Husock]
The residents of Pruitt-Igoe

went on a rent strike.

Rents are supposed
to pay for maintenance.

People said,
we can't afford these rents.

Places built with
scotch tape and chewing gum,

or something,
and starting to fall down.

And Pruitt-Igoe
went straight downhill

toward physical dilapidation
and eventual demolition.

You have the ghettoization
in government properties

of poor black people.

Instead of their moving slowly
up the socioeconomic ladder,

in part through
the ownership of property,

they're on this
whole other track.

A dependency track.

We created the expectation that
people are going to be cared for

for their life.

That poverty is a life sentence.

Our government programs,

and most people have problems
that set them back a long time.

My mother will be
mad at me if I say this.

But most of the programs
come from the Democratic party.

And that's to keep
us in bondage.

And people need to
step out of that, you know,

because that was
a set up for a failure.

[Adolphus Pruitt]
Let's be clear.

The progressive
agenda is not the black agenda.

That inherited culture

that we had as a people,
and I think when we lost that,

we lost a lot.

We reached a point where,
as we failed to become educated,

and other things,
it did not prevent us from still

creating next, new generations.

And so we had a generation
that was...

when I say sub-standard,

I'm not talking about them
as a human, as a person,

I'm talking about sub-standard
as relates to the skill set

they needed to survive
in a society that we're in.

That as we fail
in there and we created children

and then they fail to gain
that subset that you had to have

to survive in
the society that we're in

and then they
had children and they fail.

Well...
that's like taking a...

the purest wine...

and each time
you pour some in a glass,

you water it down a little bit.
[chuckles]

Over the years now,
the man as he's been down,

for something
he did not created,

that he had to try
to survive in,

and the one thing about slavery,
when we were free,

nobody taught us how to be free.

And so we're still struggling,
even today,

how to live a life of freedom.

[Shelby] Of course,
Michael Brown was far too young

to have seen Pruitt-Igoe,
much less lived there.

But the liberalism
that spawned Pruitt-Igoe,

did not collapse
with the buildings.

Liberalism's faithlessness
in blacks.

-[soft piano music]
-Yes,

its unacknowledged bigotry
toward them,

was a vote of no confidence
in their ability

to agent their own uplift.

By the time Michael was born,

liberalism had suburbanized
the Pruitt-Igoe model.

It used Section 8
housing vouchers

to generate
suburban neighborhoods

and low priced
apartment complexes,

high unemployment,
high crime,

a transient population, drugs,
gangs, terrible schools.

Michael attended four
high schools in four years.

What William Julius Wilson
charitably called

an underclass.

Liberalism's great sin

was to steal responsibility
for black problems

away from black people,

leaving them vulnerable
to destructive social forces,

such as the drug epidemic
of the 70's and 80's.

It was the suffering of blacks

that justified liberalism's
demand for power.

But this only relegates blacks
to permanent victim-hood

and alienates them from
the power to uplift themselves.

This system becomes
the enabler for your failure

because if someone could make
your "yes's" mean yes

and your "no's" mean no,
then you basically a puppet.

So you have mothers that have
grown children that be like,

"Woah, my kid's a good kid.

He doesn't break in
anyone's house.

He doesn't do drive-by shooting.

He doesn't have
tattoos all over his face."

But those are actually things
you would think would be normal

to not do.

In an African American
community,

not everyone but a lot of us,

is the exception and not
the rule to move forward in life

and then
you have the reinforcements.

There are three things
that affect your growth

in the African American
community, and that's your home,

that's your community
and that's your school.

You come from a broken home,

you get sent to
a school that's ill equipped,

then you come back to
a neighborhood

where there's
dilapidated buildings.

You have people
that haven't set goals

for themselves in life.

So you begin to get fooled
and tricked in to believe that

this is what being black is.

[Shelby] I only realized,
long after the fact

that I grew up rather poor.

We grew our own vegetables
in vacant lots,

the back alley was
our playground,

yet adults were, for the most
part, respected and obeyed.

In the neighborhood they
were an unofficial authority.

They agreed on what mattered.

And would correct you, without
permission from your parents.

This was the authority
that the government usurped

in Pruitt-Igoe

and wherever else people
lived on public assistance.

Effectively, it was an act
of White Supremacy.

It was colonialism.

This faithlessness
in black authority,

is what gave us the world
Michael Brown lived in.

Perhaps
the most insidious feature

of liberalism after the 60's

is that it dismisses
individual responsibility

as an agent of black uplift.

Problems are always
the fault of a systemic enemy

like racism.

Individual responsibility
is irrelevant.

For example,
let's ask a daring question,

one that a group like
Black Lives Matter would forbid.

Is Michael Brown in any way
responsible for his own death?

If Michael Brown had a sense
of his own significance

and his own importance,

and he valued his life,

he wouldn't take the chance
of risking it.

So he wouldn't risk it.

[Shelby] What demons might have
been at work within him

when he arrived at that
profoundly bad decision

to slam his fist into
the officer's face,

to wrestle him for his gun

and to make that final,
fateful charge

against Officer Wilson.

It's lethal to say
that people,

give them a personal exemption
for any personal responsibility.

They say whatever you do

that's injuring yourself
is not your fault.

If that's not your fault, how
can you hold them responsible?

[Shelby] The liberalism
that insists on Michael Brown

being a victim of racism,

also makes him an invisible man.

We have no chance to know
what really ails him.

And so liberalism
invisibilizes

all of black America.

It leaps over
our actual problems

to highlight racism
as a source of all our ills.

Modern liberalism does not like
human complexity in its victims.

It wants the lines
of responsibility

to be clear and simple

and always to point
at the white world.

Racism has always made
the classic struggle

between good faith and bad faith
much harder for blacks.

How do you keep
good faith in America

when you're constantly told
that you are oppressed?

Still, good faith is the energy
we need to build a good life.

Bad faith is faithlessness.

A disbelief in our power
to make a life.

So that we end up giving up
even before starting.

[Pastor Brooks] He falls seven
times. He rises seven times.

He falls seven times,
he gets back up seven times.

I want to suggest, secondly
if you're going to get back up,

you must learn
that persistence pays off.

[Shelby] While in Chicago

I got to meet a pastor
who worked with young people

on this matter of faith.

As if to challenge
faithlessness itself,

Pastor Corey Brooks
had located his church

in the heart of Woodlawn,

one of Chicago's most
violent neighborhoods.

[Pastor Brooks] We see it a lot,
with a lot of young guys

in the neighborhood
who don't value their life.

And they don't
know their self-worth.

And a lot of it is a result of
them not believing in themselves

or not having someone
to believe in them.

Or not having someone
to encourage them

that you can to do better,
you can

get to a level that somebody
in your family did not get to.

It just takes hard work
and dedication

but if you don't have
those messages

going forward, it's hard
for you to value life

when everybody
is shooting and killing.

[Shelby] He came to our meeting
with a man

who was a legend in Chicago.

A former drug lord
who had repented

and found a new life in
giving back to this community.

It was either go back
to the streets and sell drugs

or be with the pastor.

So I got frustrated and told
pastor, "Sir I can't do this."

He said, "I'm going to tell you
something, young man.

If you go back to the streets,

don't call my phone,

don't come around me

and you're not going to
do it in this neighborhood.

Find a new
neighborhood to do it in."

"So, my friend, who do you
think you're talking to?"

He said,
"I'm talking to you."

And it kind of threw me back.

Man, what's this man
doing to me,

talking to me like I'm a nobody?

[Pastor Brooks]
It's easy to say,

"The white man,
the white man,"

and point the finger,

when in reality, we need to take
a very close look at ourselves.

We focus on
transformation of the person

and we're telling them, "Hey,

education,
you got to get it together.

Economically,
you've got to get it together.

Family and spiritually,
you have to get it together.

And you have to
take responsibility."

I've discovered
there is no failure

except in no longer trying.

I just said
something right there!

The only failure in life

is when you fail
to get back up again.

[Varney] I'm known in Chicago

throughout a lot of states
as "The Twin,"

or, quote unquote,
"The Bentley Twin,"

because me and my twin brother
we drove Bentley's.

I grew up out
of a Calumet building,

which is called--
which is on 62nd and Calumet.

As a child I could say,
I had a...

unbalanced upcoming
because my mom was

living in the projects
and I have a father

that's from Africa,
he's a foreigner.

But he come over here as a kid

and he made
a great life for himself.

But living between
the projects

and a little house with
a white fence around it,

which was with my father,

it was kind
of off balance for me because,

I wasn't used to

living the kind of lifestyle
my father was living.

He was very strict.
It was about books and school.

I see my mom selling drugs,

selling weed,
I see my sister selling weed.

So by me seeing my mom and them

doing what they were doing,
as a kid,

I picked up on what they
were doing, I wanted to do.

I loved that project lifestyle.

It was just some
16 story building,

kids running everywhere.
It was my kind of lifestyle.

I dropped out of school.
I ran away from home.

All the time, while the other
guys were selling their drugs,

and taking their money and they
going and buy them nice clothes,

and smoking their marijuana.

I was putting my money up
under the mattress

and I was 13, 14 years old.

Because I knew my father always,

my father worked 90 jobs.

I'm being honest. My father was
a teacher, he was a cab driver,

he was running for office,

[mumbles]
He stayed busy.

He stayed busy
and I didn't understand.

Like man, this man,
all he do is work, work, work.

[Shelby] While Varney was
drawn into the life of crime,

the gift his father
gave him was personal agency.

He believed
he could be a self-made man.

[Varney] Then I took
the money that I saved up

and I went to a guy,
a gentleman who I knew,

I said, "Hey, listen, I want
to buy something from you."

"What are you talking about?"

When I showed him my money,
he was surprised.

And I took that product

and I sit at a table

and I fixed it up because this
is back then when a crack

had just hit.

And I fixed this drug up,

and I put it in these packs.
And I gathered me some kids,

okay, and I gave them the packs

and when I gave them the packs,
I became a boss at 15 years.

So now I'm in a situation
to where

the police gonna either kill me
or I'm going to kill them.

[Pastor Brooks]
Many of the failures

are originally
designed to finish us off

if properly used,
watch this,

could be the very things
that put us on top.

-Let me back up...
-I'm running this building

[Varney] 24 hours a day.

So anytime
you come to this building,

you be here to buy drugs.

No matter what
time of the day it is.

You be here to buy drugs.
And I'm running it by shifts.

We doing eight hour shifts.

I was selling heroin
and I was selling crack.

But between the two,

I might make about
6 to 7 thousand dollars a day.

My father went to jail

behind the things that
I was doing back in 2004.

He didn't do anything

but due to the fact
that he was my father,

they locked him up as well.

When this farmer had a mule,
this mule fell into a dry well.

And the well was real deep.

And he decided that since
I can't rescue him,

I don't want to
see him starve to death.

I don't want to see him
die in that hole like that.

So the farmer decided

that he was going to get
a truck of trash and dirt.

And he was going to,
every day for three days,

throw the trash and the dirt

on the mule
who had fell in the well.

[Varney] In 2015.

Me coming home, I was lost.

I'm going to be honest.
I just done 11 years for feds.

I got some good street skills.

But me coming home, my friends
take me to the church.

And I'm like,
"Who I gonna meet?

They like,
"You meeting the pastor."

I'm like, "I don't want to talk
to no pastor bro,

I just came home."

They like, "No, you have to talk
to him cause

he run our neighborhood now."

I'm like, "He don't run
no neighborhood I'm in."

So we seen the pastor
and he was like, "Okay,

I know who you are.
I heard a lot about you.

Glad to see you home.
But I'm the new Sheriff in town.

Do you really know what
you did to your community?"

I'm like, "No, what?"

He said,
"You tear your community down.

You fed them poison."

Every individual that
came and bought those drugs,

it was slowly, slowly
destroying their life.

[Pastor Brooks]
When they were in the streets,

they would get a pack,

get some drugs,
they put a guy on.

He start his own business.

So we're just saying, hey,

take those same principles,

transform them
into something positive

instead of something negative,

but keep using those
same business principles

because the principles work.

Something unusual happened

with the first load
of trash and dirt.

He unloaded it in the well.

The trash and the dirt
fell on the mule.

But the mule
was a real smart mule.

He shook it off.
Stepped on it.

Stepped on up.

You missed it.

Every day they bring
the trash and the dirt.

They throw it
in the hole on the mule.

He shake it off.
Step on it.

Step on up higher.

You missed it again.
On the third day,

they brought more trash,
they brought more dirt,

they threw it on the mule,
he shook it off,

stepped on it
and stepped on up higher.

He kept stepping up so high
that eventually he stepped out.

[all cheering]

So he says look,
what you need to do is.

Sit down.
Get your credit together.

Let's get you a regular job.

Let's get you stable.
Because if I can get you stable,

if I can get you the lesson,

we can get some
other kids the lesson.

A lot of these kids, they
sitting in a house right now,

smoking a weed
and he passes it to his mama.

Or they smoking weed and they
pass it to their father.

Or they drinking, they kids.

That's kids,
this is what they doing.

The problem is...
no one is telling them,

I love you.
No one is hugging them.

So now, in this community
that we are in now,

although these kids,
I must stress

I love all them kids
like they my own.

But these kids they get up
in the morning,

they can't wait to
get up in the morning.

The first thing they do when
they get up in the morning,

they don't brush their teeth,
they don't wash their face,

they don't do anything,
they run straight to the pastor.

Because the pastor
is everybody's daddy.

I have the things
that I want in life.

I work in a real job
and I owe it all to the pastor.

I really wish I would've
listened to my father.

Because now thinking about it,

my father was only
trying to teach me

all the right things in life.

[soft emotive music]

[Shelby] Pastor Brooks
and his message of good faith

found the way ahead in the
tenacity of an ordinary mule.

We can't change the past
and we can't wait on justice.

Let's go to work today.

But for many, it is hard
to let go of the past.

Today is the fifth anniversary
of Michael Brown's death.

A year earlier,
the protesters had demanded

that the Ferguson Market
simply be given over to them.

Now they wanted the newly
elected County Prosecutor,

a black man, to reopen
the Michael Brown shooting.

[Michael Brown Sr.]
So I stand here today,

to discuss the unsatisfied...

with the way
my son's death was handled.

And I am demanding
evidence to be analyzed.

And accountability to follow.

So I'm requesting for
Wesley Bell to open this case.

-Right guys.
-Reopen Michael Brown.

Here was grievance with
no supporting evidence.

Protest without the good faith
that it would lead to anything.

My son was not the first to die

by the hands of those who
vow to protect and serve

and sadly,
he won't be the last.

[Shelby] As I watched
this press conference,

I had no idea
that in nine months,

America would,
once again explode.

-[George] Untie this thing.
-[police officer] Relax.

[George] Man,
I can't breathe, my face.

[police officer] Let's get him.

-What do you want?
-[George] I can't breathe.

Please can anybody--

I can't breathe!

-Get up and get in the car.
-[George] Mama!

-Get up and get in the car.
-[George] I can't.

[Shelby]
When I first saw the image

of George Floyd on the news,

I was shocked by
the gruesomeness of the killing.

[protester 1] I think
there's a right way to protest

and that's peacefully.

[protester 2] Fuck that.
We tired homie.

We tired of that
punk-ass shit!

[man shouting] Hands up.
Don't shoot!

-[explosions]
-[woman screaming]

[crowd shouting and screaming]

Is this the way
to go about it, no!

[observer] Oh my God!
They burned all this down.

They burned all
these buildings down.

You call 911,
they not coming.

That's how crazy...

[Shelby] But I was not shocked

by the world's reaction
to this killing.

[observer] This is sad man.

[Shelby] Unlike Michael Brown,
George Floyd

was literally
an innocent victim,

reminiscent of police brutality.

George Floyd's story has been
the story of black folks.

Because ever since 401 years ago

the reason we could
never be who we wanted

and dreamed of being,

is you kept your knee
on our neck.

[Shelby] As in Bensonhurst
and Ferguson,

Al Sharpton was once again
taking an isolated atrocity

and elevating it to the point

of absolute systemic racism.

Where every black
was George Floyd

and every cop was Derek Chauvin.

[crowd chanting]
Make love, not war!

[indistinct shouting]

[Shelby] America's original sin
is not slavery.

It is simply the use of race

as a means to power.

Whether for good or ill,

race is a corruption.

Always.

And it always turns one group
into the convenience

of another group.

-[car hooting]
-[crowd cheering]

[crowd chanting]
Black lives matter!

Black lives matter!

[Shelby] There were many
peaceful protesters

genuinely outraged

and rightfully demanding
police reforms.

But I think you can do better
next time

by doing the right thing.

[crowd shouting]

No, it's a peaceful protest.
It doesn't need to go that far.

[Shelby] But as these protests
stretched from days,

into weeks, into months,

it became clear that this murder

was less a tragedy
and more an opportunity.

-[crowd clamoring]
-[glass shatters]

[Shelby] For Black Lives Matter,
Floyd and many others like him,

prove the systemic breadth
of racism

and thus,
the systemic scale

of redress due to blacks.

But as with every poetic truth,

this invites outrage
at the wrong problems.

Hi everyone, as many of you
know my name is Lilith Sinclair

and I am an Afro-indigenous
non-binary local organizer

here in Portland.

-[cheering]
-Organizing for the abolition

of not just
the militarized police state

but also the United States
as we know it.

[Shelby] As I've watched
these protests,

it became strikingly clear to me

how the civil rights era
was a good faith movement.

They wanted in to America.

Today's Black Lives Matter,
at least the leadership,

is a bad faith movement.

Anti-individual.
Anti-nuclear family.

Anti-capitalism.

They want to dismantle America.

[protesters clamoring]

[Shelby]
Yet when I was in Ferguson

during the summer of 2019,

I would often
wake up to the news

of another
innocent black child killed.

Yet again I have to
stand here and tell you

another child was killed.

A seven year old boy is dead.

A little girl
was shot and killed.

Another weekend
and another young victim.

-Thirteen.
-We've had so many children die,

it's hard to remember
all of their names.

Kayden Johnson,
two years old.

Kennedy Powell
was just three.

Eleven year old, Charnija Keys

was the most popular girl
on her block.

Eddie Hill
was so gifted in school

he was allowed to skip a grade.

[Shelby] Black Lives Matter
never showed up for these kids.

Or those in Chicago, Baltimore
or New Orleans or elsewhere.

[TV reporter]
Seven year old brother, Xavier,

was said to begin
second grade today.

[mumbles] I saw the bullet
hit him right here.

That's when I tried to do CPR
but I forgot to hold his nose.

There was no power for blacks,
for innocents, for whites

to be had in these
senseless deaths.

This marks the 17th child.

That's 17 children,

killed by guns,
in the St. Louis area since May.

[crowd shouting]

[Shelby] On the other hand,
with the killing of George Floyd

America's entire history
of racism came into play.

By implication, all of
white America stood accused.

The power here
was literally enormous.

Whites around
the entire western world

hit the streets
in protest against this murder.

[cheering and clapping]

[Shelby]
These whites seemed to say,

as an anti-racist,
I am guilty of racism.

But this confession of guilt,

as with all whites,
past and present,

is also their proclamation
of racial innocence.

[crowd] Black lives matter!

[Shelby]
This desperation among whites,

for innocence of racism

often presses America

into bad faith solutions
to racial problems.

It is time to end
the American experiment

and then start all over again.

I think that we have to
burn it down.

Do you think it's time to end
the American experiment?

Yes.

[explosion]

[Shelby]
This was the desperation

that fueled
the liberalism of Pruitt-Igoe.

The War on Poverty.
Affirmative action.

School busing. Diversity this
and diversity that.

This grab for entitlements

continues to this day.

These programs give
white America moral legitimacy.

Or at least the illusion of it.

Even as they utterly fail
to help the black underclass.

That's got nothing
to do with us!

What you're going to do
if you're 90 years old

and you go yeah!

Then some kid
throw a bomb in there,

-trying to be cute, like that!
-[explosion]

And then everybody gets to
go home and we stay black.

And we get blamed for
your Black Lives fucking Matter.

[Shelby]
White guilt's corruption

is that it is always
self-referential.

It needs blacks to be blacks
rather than human beings.

And it leaves us with
a liberalism

that is actually an ideology
of white innocence.

I was wrong.

I thought the oppression of
black American's was over with.

It is not.

[birds tweeting]

The liberalism
that came out of the 60's

has proven to be a more
insidious oppression

than either slavery
or Jim Crow segregation.

Those oppressions
confined your person.

Liberalism wants your very soul.

It wants you to be a grateful
and mindless captive.

But a captive nonetheless.

This is the land where my family
once lived as slaves.

This is also the land
where my family were set free.

Camp Nelson, Kentucky.

This is the Negro cemetery where
many of my family are buried.

This is my aunt.
My aunt Eva. [chuckles]

She used to come visit us
in Chicago on the Greyhound bus.

And she always had
a pet raccoon on a leash.

Robert Steele is my uncle.

He was pretty famous.
He played the mandolin

in a musical group
that got a lot of attention.

Here is the school my father
went to as a little boy.

During the Civil War,
many of its first students

were the children
of black soldiers

who fought for the Union
in exchange for their freedom.

"I find the refugees
manifesting an almost

universal desire to learn.

And that they do make
rapid progress.

I feel that it is blessed
to labor with such people.

John G. Fee 1865."

These blacks seized the margin
of freedom open to them.

Narrow as it might have been,
and made meaningful lives.

My father among them.

And they had to do this even
as Jim Crow was on the rise.

Lynchings were on the rise.

Every effort was being made

in the South and beyond,
to repress

these newly freed people.

[background chatter]

[Shelby] I saw the same truth
during my time

with Pastor Brooks
and Varney Volker in Chicago.

This is one of the apartments
the pastor took on.

He brought
some of the young guys in

to come in and teach them
and help them to learn a trade.

[indistinct chatter]

[Shelby] Far from the limelight

of Al Sharpton
and Black Lives Matter

and despite horrible
gang violence and poverty,

these men worked every day

at the often un-glamorous labor

of character building.

I'm 20 and hopefully by the time
I'm 30 or 35,

maybe I could do the same thing
that the pastor do,

helping other young men
do stuff like this

and go farther in life,
instead of just me.

Cause me personally,
I was in and out of jail

then I had my son
and he changed my life.

[soft music]

[Shelby] I'm wondering
what would have happened

if Michael Brown
had had the good fortune

to meet Pastor Brooks?

[Varney]
If you do something positive,

you already did enough negative,
you do something positive

it will rub down
to the next person

so this what they basically
gonna do.

It's like this is becoming
a trend now.

He's a great role model for the
neighborhood, as well as him.

Just because
we from this community

everybody look down on us

like we don't have help,
here's our help.

You've got to take what you got,

deal with it for now,
work your way up.

[hammering]

[Shelby] These young men
remind me of my father.

He believed in the
transformative magic of work.

[sentimental music]

Like so many cities after
the race riots of the 60's,

Ferguson is worse off today

than before
the shooting of Michael Brown.

Homeowners, many of them black,

struggle with
dwindling property values.

Nearby schools continue
to perform poorly.

There are fewer police officers
and crime is up.

A young man walked
past me on Canfield Drive

and literally ten minutes later,
was shot dead.

And yet I still
saw signs of hope.

One of the most inspirational
people I met, was Miss Queen.

They are wonderful.
I'm awfully proud of you guys.

I love my babies are smart.

Who tackles poverty, whether
with kids inside a local church

or out in the field with
families down on their luck.

I'm going to give them
the best attention

and I know they care
for each other

and I know they want help.

That's why these girls around me
are all going to school.

This one is going to get
his GED.

This beautiful family here,

I don't want
to see them in the system,

in jail or in homes or anything.

We go out in the field
every day.

Lot of people don't want to go
in the field cause they think...

I guess you get dirty
out here in people's pain.

But we got water and soap.
We go home and take a bath.

But it starts from home.

It starts from home.
I talking about

you gotta go inside the home.

See what's there,
there's a problem at home.

That's why they scared.
I tell the children

when there's no love at home

and when it gets at the home,
they'll stop, you know.

I want to raise my kids
better than I was raised.

I don't want my kids
on the street like I was.

I want my kids to get things
that I never got before.

You know, I want my kids
be better than me.

I want to be
better than my mama,

you know, everybody want their
kids be better than them.

[baby crying]

[Miss Queen] You know it's not
about color at all, it's about

making a good--
making a positive difference

in somebody's life.

-We go back to school.
-Right!

Our little love child.

She got a story about how she
came to us, what was your story?

I got bullied at school about my
color and stuff.

Miss Queen
started tutoring me and...

Miss Queen and Miss Nicky
been there ever since.

She had a host school
for a whole bunch of children.

And she just...
I just love her to death.

I don't know what to say really?

Helping other people
makes me happy.

Seeing other people helping
other people makes me happy.

Sometimes I have
tears in my eyes and just,

God just been everywhere
and helping them.

[Shelby] That's beautiful.

My mother had a garden.

And so just
plant a seed and see that grow

and feeding
the whole family with them.

My mother did that all the time.

-Go show Miss Nicky.
-Wow, look at that.

-Let's go show Miss Nicky.
-A fairy.

Always plan for the next day.

And always keep your hopes
and your dreams,

you know, don't ever give up
on them

because it's possible cause
of God, I believe in God.

I know it's possible.

There will always be tomorrow.
Tomorrow always come along.

[piano music]

[Shelby] Though my father
was a civil rights activist

all his adult life,

he was never
a captive of liberalism.

He went only
to the third grade in school.

When he was eight, his father
was killed in a wagon accident.

His mother died when he was 12.

He lived for two years in the
back of a white farmer's barn.

The farmer's son
brought him food at night.

His brothers and sisters
were dispersed

and no better off than him.

Jim Crow segregation
reigned everywhere.

At 14,
he took off for the North.

It was
an existential circumstance.

A man alone
in an indifferent world.

My father made a meaningful life

because he never practiced
America's original sin.

He favored character,
over race, as a means to power.

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody
Turn me round ♪

♪ Turn me round ♪

♪ Turn me round
Ain't gonna let no body ♪

♪ Turn me round
I'm gonna keep on walking ♪

♪ Keep on talking ♪

♪ Marching on to freedom land ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let no jail house
Turn me round ♪

♪ Turn me round
Turn me round ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let
No jail house ♪

♪ Turn me round
I'm gonna keep on walking ♪

♪ Keep on talking
Marching on to freedom land ♪

♪ Don't let segregation
Turn me round ♪

♪ Turn me round
Turn me round ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let segregation
Turn me round ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on walking
Keep on talking ♪

♪ Marching on to freedom land ♪