Nyle Fort, the 24-year-old minister at the heart of Ferguson

“It scares people, and it shouldn’t,” Fort said about being black. His activism, he says, is motivated by a desire to rise above that ignorance, hate and suppression.

Fort recently focused his activism in Ferguson, where officer Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on Aug. 9. Fort was one of thousands of community leaders to descend on the small St. Louis suburb and lend his voice to the protest known as #FergusonOctober. It was an opportunity to deliver a very simple message to the world: “Black Lives Matter.”

“While what you see here may have been started by the actions of one singular moment, what it represents goes far beyond Ferguson,” Fort said. “This is ground zero for a new movement led by a new generation of young people demanding justice, not only for Michael Brown, but for the millions of black people whose lives are being disposed of.”

Watch full mini doc above, a joint production by RYOT and Fusion.

@fusion