Spoken word artist and musician Amy Leon is prepping her debut album, Something Melancholy, dropping soon, but in the meantime, she released the powerful visual for “Burning in Birmingham.”
It’s a re-imagining of the 1963 Birmingham Church bombing that killed four little black girls named Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair, a turning point in the civil rights movement. The video stars Dominique Fishback, Zuri Ford, Anise S. Hines, Amy León, and Kirsten Gianna Webb.
“Burning in Birmingham’ is a song of protest and reckoning, looking at the cyclical nature of racism in America. This piece was written for an event where I was asked to perform alongside a conversation with Sabryna Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, discussing police brutality in America and the rise of necessary action,” León tells Afropunk.
Watch the poignant visual below: