Mercutio Southall, who was violently kicked out of a Donald Trump event in Alabama last month, plans to meet with the Birmingham Police Department next week to discuss a hate-crime investigation.
Southall provided a letter to The Daily Beast that written by his lawyers. It criticized the lack of investigation into the incident from the department itself. Birmingham Police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards previously told The Daily Beast that as of late last month, the department was not going to actively pursue the incident as a hate crime. Edwards was dismissive of Southall in the past saying, “Our department is very familiar with Mr. Southall and that’s just what he does at times. I think it’s worked out pretty good because he’s gotten a lot of attention.”
Now, according to Southall, he and his lawyers have secured a meeting to discuss the matter further.
“In 2015, fifty years passedd [sic] the civil rights movement, I was (metaphorically) lynched in broad daylight while they were being cheered on," Southall told The Daily Beast about the event. "A couple blocks away from the civil rights museum.”
Southall and his lawyers, Kathleen Johnson and David Gespass, claim that a Birmingham officer was actually on the scene that day, despite the police department saying that no one saw the incident. The violent event also gave Southall a concussion, his lawyers said.
“Honestly chump is going down right now one way or another,” Southall said of Trump’s recently increased xenophobic remarks. “His facism is showing and it cant be covered back up now.”
Another individual of color, immigration-rights activist Ariel Rojas, was also forcibly removed from a Trump event in October.
Southall says he hasn’t spoken with any of the national figures involved with the Black Lives Matter movement about the incident.
—Gideon Resnick