Between the World and Me (2020) - full transcript

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(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) ♪