Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! From LeRoi to Amiri | movie | 2024 | Official Clip - video Dailymotion

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The story of how Everett Leroy Jones became Amiri Baraka, from his childhood to the mid '60s, is told through interviews | dG1fTDJ0V25sM0JsQ2M

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00:00 [VIDEO PLAYBACK]

00:07 -Newark, New Jersey became a city of race riots, violence,

00:10 looting, and hate.

00:12 For five days, it was a battleground

00:13 and a looter's paradise.

00:15 Colored citizens clashed with police, National Guardsmen,

00:18 and state troopers.

00:20 24 people were killed and 1,200 injured.

00:23 Nearly half the city was in the grip of terror.

00:26 -We were sitting on a porch talking.

00:29 And then it got real quiet.

00:34 And then I looked up and I saw it

00:36 looked like the sky was glowing.

00:39 And then a guy came running around

00:40 and he says, they're breaking out windows

00:42 on Springfield Avenue.

00:43 They're breaking out windows on Springfield Avenue.

00:46 So we jumped into my new Volkswagen camper bus, me

00:50 and two other guys.

00:51 And we went around to see.

00:52 And man, they were doing it.

00:54 They were ripping the windows out

00:55 and they were setting fire to things.

00:58 So we drove up into the middle of it,

01:01 Belmont and Springfield Avenue.

01:02 And we were circling around, really looking,

01:06 checking it out up close.

01:08 What is a rebellion up close?

01:11 Most people never seen what that looks like.

01:14 But then we started picking up people who were injured.

01:17 Man was shot in the leg.

01:18 I picked him up.

01:18 We put him in a car.

01:20 We took him over to the hospital.

01:21 It was like a war zone in there.

01:24 And over there on Belmont and Spruce,

01:26 they were actually shooting.

01:27 Bam, bam, bam, it pops.

01:30 And then people were returning fire from different places.

01:34 So we drove around in the heat of that,

01:39 got some more people out of the street.

01:44 And then we went to some guy's house.

01:46 It was about after midnight then.

01:48 Stayed there.

01:50 Then we took this one guy home.

01:51 We had stayed out too long.

01:52 The streets were clear then.

01:55 And so here we came across South 7th Street about 1 o'clock

01:59 in the morning.

02:02 And it was absolutely quiet.

02:03 Nobody was on the streets.

02:05 And then we got down about four or five blocks down.

02:09 And I could see all of these red lights down here at the corner.

02:14 There's about five or six police cars down there.

02:19 And we looked at it.

02:24 And I said, you know, stop.

02:28 Because we had thought, wait, one time we were going to break.

02:30 But I said, no, stop.

02:34 They opened the car door.

02:35 And when the door opened, this guy hit me in the head

02:38 with his pistol.

02:39 The 38, choo, choo, split open like an egg.

02:46 I had said to him, though, I said, I know.

02:48 I went to high school with you.

02:49 It was true.

02:51 I can't think of this guy's name.

02:52 But it was an Italian kid I went to high school with.

02:56 He popped my head open and dragged me out of there.

03:01 And then they started beating us with these sticks, man.

03:04 It was like you've never been beat like that in your life.

03:08 I thought I was going to die, actually.

03:10 My whole face was covered with blood.

03:12 It was like warm.

03:13 You know, you have so much blood in your face you can't see.

03:16 And it's warm, your whole face is warm with blood.

03:19 It was all over, blood on my hands, my shirt, everywhere.

03:22 And they were just still beating me.

03:25 And the only thing that stopped them

03:26 was the people up in the window started throwing stuff at them

03:29 and screaming at them.

03:29 So they put me in a police car.

03:30 I bled over.

03:31 The guy says, get him out of there.

03:32 I bled over his police car.

03:34 So the guy throws me out of the police car.

03:39 And that really saved my life.

03:41 They put me in a paddy wagon.

03:43 And this one sick cop says, yes, I'm the devil.

03:46 Yes, I'm the devil.

03:49 I was screaming.

03:51 At the time, remember, I was screaming, Allah, uakba.

03:53 You know, Allah is the greatest.

03:55 But that was like some--

03:56 I mean, I was not a Muslim, but I had, you know,

04:00 at least been close to it based on the Malcolm thing.

04:04 But that's all I can remember, screaming,

04:06 because I had to say something because they were killing me.

04:09 You know, and I was just trying to scream

04:11 some kind of defiance at them.

04:13 Come out, niggas, niggas, niggas.

04:15 Come out.

04:16 Help us stop the devil.

04:18 Help us build a new world.

04:20 Niggas, come out.

04:22 Brothers are we, with you and your sons.

04:25 Your daughters are ours.

04:26 And we are all the same, all the blackness from one black Allah.

04:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:35 (dramatic music)

Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! From LeRoi to Amiri | movie | 2024 | Official Clip

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