[ambient music] [indistinct conversation] - [Dikerius Blevins] How was that?

All right.

Let's take it from the one.

A mural on the street is fresh blood for the canvas.

[slow jazz piano] You were crowned king of the city but the uprising caused you to panic.

Together apart, you said we were magic.

Night and day the people march into the street chance echoing like a seance, calling out to dearly departed a legacy of civil rights in its wake.

"Hoover killed EJ!"

Yes.

May he forever be honored.

A history built off blood since they killed Bonita Carter, panic or pandemic, but as a ride in the streets, panic or pandemic if there's no justice then there's is no peace the language of the unheard echoes into the night.

When did your magic go missing?

For many people the writing got them into music, but for me hearing people who were lyricists and hearing people who were word smiths, they had a way with words, that made me and White want to write.

Depending on how you grow up, you grow up hearing stories about your past and you know, you grow up in your neighborhood, your hood, or whatever you grow up, hearing the stories about what happened here.

Like those stories would become your stories, you know.

- [Producer] The stronger flow easier bro, because then we just punch the versus - Yeah - I'm saying I don't have the hook written out.

- So just take the time to do this then.

- All right.

You want me to go in and just record it?

- [Producer] Yeah, go ahead.

- Okay - [Prod] We're waiting on you.

- I feel like it was only right for me to try to, like, you know, start writing, and that's how I got into like the spoken word scene here.

I wanted to be in community with those people and enjoy it with like-minded people.

[soft low music] Birmingham, you know, wants to display to the world that it's this diverse city with all this Southern hospitality.

But the reality is that Birmingham has a class and race issue.

People can't exist in silos and exist in their pockets.

On one side, people are living this reality, and on this side you're living an entirely different reality.

Unfortunately, Birmingham, Hoover, the metropolitan area, you know, the magic city had to come to terms with its racist history.

I wanted to see how the protests in Birmingham different from how they were being handled across the nation.

Because across the nation, people were being beat up.

They were being brutalized.

While these protests were going on in Birmingham, you got people going from this protest to the protest in Hoover.

In Birmingham, we were allowed to march, and show solidarity, and let our voice be heard.

But in Hoover, it was something totally different.

And that was the failure of Hoover to be accountable to the death of EJ Bradford.

And, you know, this wasn't the first of the protest that occurred in Hoover.

You know, this is just the one I participated in.

In the event of like George Floyd and these other, you know instances of police brutality.

People just felt like, you know what, we got to get out here and we can't forget about EJ.

You know, we can't let his name be forgotten.

We can't let Hoover forget what happened that day either.

- [News Reporter] Police officer killed EJ Bradford Jr. during Thanksgiving night apparently thinking he had fired gunshots at the mall.

- [Dikerius] I wanted to know if Birmingham or Hoover would handle the situation better, considering Birmingham's history.

My grandma, being downtown when they were hosing people down, seeing her classmates get hosed, I wanted to know if we had progressed past that point of police brutality, of riots.

All of this is culminating in this confrontation with the police and Hoover.

[riots yelling] When did your magic go missing?

[low buzzing music] conjured in blood red clay, hills carved by dynamite, a legacy of peaks and valleys.

When did your magic go missing?

Castles on hills while my peoples in a trench of suffering.

They called you the most segregated city in the south.

So when did your magic go missing?

[riots yelling] Next thing you know, I'm being snatched up, thrown into the pavement.

Officers piled on top of me.

I was kind of like, oh here we go.

- [Anthony Stallings] That was an, that was an actual thing.

And they go home, and you're sitting in a cell.

Then the next day, you feel me, like we had to go home bro.

You know how it felt to leave you there?

- [Dikerius] And when I come in there, I'm like, okay, why am I separated from everybody else?

And he's like, cause you have felony charges, for what?

- [Anthony] Felony charges?

I'm like... - [Anthony] What was it for?

- They were trying to claim, that I had assaulted, but I'm like I had got targeted and thrown on the ground.

- How did it feel being, seeing yourself... Well, how did it feel when I got you out and showed you a Twitter video that had like a bunch of thousands of whatever likes and now you're the person looking at the black kid getting arrested and slammed around and it's you?

How did that feel?

It felt so surreal to me, bruh.

- When it comes to like these movements, when it comes to protests and we kind of make it about one particular person like everybody wants a charismatic leader.

Everybody wants, you know, a person who...

They want a reason to justify like, okay, he's a good person.

He's just never- what if I was a bad person?

What if I was a thug?

Would that have made my life any less worth it?

Would that have made the stuff I experienced, you know, worthless?

You know, it doesn't matter how respectable I was, how, you know, I live my life, you know, I was always going to be racially profiled.

So yeah, it was worth it because, you know, I kept my friends out of jail.

I kept, you know, my peers from getting arrested.

Because at the end of the day, all we have is each other, and if we don't all feel like it's worth it, then we're in a bad situation.

[mellow piano tune] I'm writing this because I want to remember how I felt.

I'm sitting in a cell after experiencing a protest.

My peers have just been bonded out, but somehow I'm still here.

I think of all the moments that led up to this point.

Was it all worth it?

But when did this all start?

Was it EJ Bradford, or was it George Floyd?

What if Brianna Taylor?

What if Sandra Bland?

What about Bonita Carter?

A young black woman from our own neighborhood, who was killed by the police over 40 years ago.

What did he scenarios all have in common?

Racial profiling and an abuse of power by the state.

I don't know why I'm writing this.

Maybe this is a sequel of sorts to the letter from Birmingham jail, only not quite as eloquent.

I mean, I'm no Dr. King, but right now I can only imagine how he felt.

I think about the officer who threw me on a police car.

He said something to me that I won't soon forget.

He threw me against that car and said the most cliche thing I've ever heard.

You want to know something?

We own this town, this is our town.

[Dikerius scoffs] I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

Even Bull Connor had better one-liners, but I guess they don't make white supremacists like they used to.

I have a lot to be mad about.

Isn't that how the song goes?

♪ I have a lot to be mad about, a lot to be sad about.

♪ But I keep my head up because I know I'm on a righteous path.

I know who I am and I know what I stand for.

And I know that me and my friends, we stand for joy, and we'll fight and we'll keep on fighting until a more peaceful future is built for us.

A radical future.

Resistance is always necessary, but there's beauty in the struggle.

In my mind, that kind of joy is revolutionary.

[bright piano flutter] [gentle electric piano music] ♪