(chord strums)
- [Voiceover] On August 9th, 2014,
a police officer shot and
killed 18 year old Michael Brown
during an altercation
in Ferguson, Missouri.
(people clamoring)
The conflicting accounts
of what led to the shooting
have never been reconciled.
But regardless of the circumstances,
the sight of Brown's
body lying in the street
for hours was an outrage.
- The picture of his body in the street
is being tweeted and they
still haven't removed it.
Why is this happening?
Why is this boy lying dead in the street?
Black communities know what it means when
a black kid is killed by somebody
that is white with power
and the body is left
there to terrorize the community.
- You took my son away from me.
You know how hard it was for me to get him
to stay in school and graduate?
You know how many black men graduate?
Not many!
Because you bring them
down to this type of level
when they feel like, I don't
got nothing to live for anyway.
- [Crowd] Hands up, don't shoot!
Hands up, don't shoot!
Hands up, don't shoot!
Hands up, don't shoot!
- [Voiceover] After residents gathered
to protest the killing,
the police response
shocked the country.
It looked more like a
scene from war-torn Iraq
than a suburb in Missouri.
- It was the tanks that made
everybody pay attention.
Conservative white folks and republicans
and democrats and white
people across the spectrum
saying, why do you have a
tank in Ferguson, Missouri?
Why are the police in military riot gear?
(explosion bangs)
- [Voiceover] You must
disperse the area immediately.
You are in violation of
the state-imposed curfew.
- [Crowd] Hands up, don't shoot.
Hands up, don't shoot.
- The police had every type of machinery
you could ever have
and we got tear gassed.
I'm getting tear gassed
in an American street
fighting for the police not to kill people
and I was like, this just isn't okay.
And I'm just one of many who
liked stopped being silent
because of, because of
what happened in August.
- [Voiceover] DeRay Mckesson,
a former math teacher,
was appalled by what he saw
in the streets of Ferguson.
- [Crowd] I am Mike Brown.
- [Voiceover] He left his job
to become a full-time activist,
joining a rising groundswell of outrage
unified by a simple, but powerful slogan.
- [Crowd] Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter.
- We know black lives matter
the way all lives matter
but unfortunately in
America, you gotta say
black lives matter because when you say
all lives matter often times,
you don't get to the black lives.
(chord strums)
