He is the face of the Emantic “E.J.” Bradford protests in Hoover, but above all, Carlos Chaverst, Jr., wants to be the voice the slain black Hueytown man no longer has after being killed by Hoover police.

Any time there has been controversy or perceived injustices against minorities in and around Birmingham and beyond during the last eight years, Chaverst has been there to demonstrate.

Quality-of-life issues like gun violence in the black community. High-water bills. Police-involved shootings in Ferguson, Missouri and Cleveland, Ohio. President Trump’s travel ban. Campaign rallies in Birmingham. All have prompted Chaverst to put on his protest shoes.

But the controversies that Chaverst courts, and his provocative protesting style, have also come to backfire on him. On Tuesday, he was arrested during a protest at the Hoover jail on four outstanding warrants -- three for disorderly conduct and one for loitering -- stemming from his protesting of Bradford’s death.

The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree when it comes to Chaverst’s activism; he said his grandmother participated in the Children’s March and was hosed down on orders from Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The paddy wagons and prison buses deployed by Hoover police during the Chaverst-led protest one night last week reminded him of those struggles from 50 years ago.

“It’s in my blood,” he said of protesting during an hour-long interview Wednesday at AL.com’s Birmingham office. “Unfortunately,when you look at what’s going on in today’s climate … we haven’t seen hoses, we haven’t seen dogs and things of that nature just yet, but that’s kind of a direct replica of what we saw years ago.”

But the tactics that have been employed by Chaverst – often holding a megaphone and yelling insults at police – has stirred up protesters. And protesters, again led by Chaverst, have angered shoppers as they move into stores shouting protests or blocking traffic. Before Tuesday, there have been only a few arrests but no violence on either side.

10 Hoover mall shooting protests at Ross Bridge and Hoover YMCA

First foray into politics

Activism was not Chaverst’s first love.

The 25-year-old Pratt City native started out in community organizing and politics, when he worked on then-Congressman Artur Davis’s gubernatorial campaign in 2010. By 2012, Chaverst said he was the regional field director in Santa Rosa Beach for President Obama’s re-election campaign in Florida.

From there, Chaverst volunteered at the office of then-City Councilwoman Sheila Tyson (Tyson, now a Jefferson County commissioner, could not be reached for comment for this story) and rose to become a paid staff member. He said he was fired in late January 2017 for what he called “activism.”

Chaverst went to the Birmingham City Hall parking deck and went live and social media to lambast a prominent black minister, Bishop Jim Lowe of Irondale’s Guiding Light Church, for allowing then-U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore to enter and speak at the church.

He suggested his termination was due to political pressure from Lowe.

“It didn’t cross my mind [that I’d be fired] because it wasn’t during work hours. But because of personal relationships that’s what happened,” he said.

Finding a calling

While Chaverst was volunteering for Tyson, he organized a gun violence symposium at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to commemorate National Gun Violence Prevention Week. Looking for speakers for the event, Tyson told Chaverst to book activist Frank Matthews.

Matthews, the head of the Outcast Voters League, became a mentor and father figure to Chaverst, whose father died just months before the symposium. Never one to shy away from controversy, Matthews has been inconspicuously absent from the Hoover protests – a move Matthews said is by design.

“I’m letting him establish himself,” said Matthews, who went on to name Chaverst secretary and youth president of his organization. “He’s calling all the calls. This is Carlos’s thing. He’s coming out of my shadows.”

After the symposium, Chaverst, who heads the Birmingham youth chapter of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, told Matthews that he wanted to attend a NAN conference in New York but couldn’t afford to pay. Matthews, along with Tyson, who heads the Birmingham chapter, was among several people who paid for Chaverst’s plane tickets.

Matthews said that early investment paid off, noting that Chaverst has accompanied him to gun smashing and burning protests in Ohio and several state capitals after 13-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police in 2014 and demonstrations in Atlanta and Birmingham later that year calling for the ouster of then-federal judge Mark Fuller following revelations that he physically abused his wife.

“Carlos is a quick study,” Matthews said, adding that Chaverst follows his methods of “research and hurt,” or preparing for protests with facts.

“If Carlos or myself come, 99 percent of what we say has already been authenticated,” Matthews said. “Carlos is a tireless trooper. He gets the truth.”

A (very brief) return to politics

After leaving Tyson’s office, Chaverst prepared to run for mayor of Birmingham in 2017 but was disqualified because he not yet reached the qualifying age of 25 yet.

Chaverst said he changed course and established the political consulting firm Chaverst Strategies, where he oversaw mayoral, city council and local elections, including then-Birmingham City Council President Johnathan Austin’s re-election campaign, Matthews’ run for mayor and Tyson’s re-election campaign for the council.

In late 2017, Chaverst said his firm was hired by the progressive political consulting firm Terra Strategies to be field director for Jefferson County during Doug Jones’s successful U.S. Senate run, although Federal Election Commission records do not corroborate his account. FEC records do show however that Chaverst was paid $500 as an individual by Democratic Senate primary candidate Jason Fisher’s campaign. He said the job on behalf of Jones’s campaign entailed driving up turnout for the black vote – a constituency that helped push Jones to victory against Moore.

Chaverst Strategies, according to Chaverst, has since assisted the campaigns for Democrats Chris Christie for attorney general and Gary Richardson for Jefferson County Commission. Chaverst said the firm’s strong suit is opposition research – a skill he tuned from his activism –, social media management and direct canvassing. State campaign finance records show that Richardson paid Chaverst’s company $1,750 and $8,100 to Chaverst individually for campaign work. But there are no records corroborating that Chaverst or his company worked on Christie’s campaign.

“Our job is to connect with voters on a local level,” he said.

Chaverst was also involved in last year’s gubernatorial campaign, although he claimed he was not paid for his role. During the Democratic primary, Chaverst started a petition calling on former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb to withdraw from the race because she supported then-U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination for U.S. attorney general.

The petition inflicted damage on Cobb to the benefit of Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, who went on to win the nomination. Maddox hired the powerhouse Democratic consulting firm Matrix LLC., but Chaverst denied being a subcontractor of Matrix, saying he put out the negative information on Cobb as a “private citizen.”

“Do I know Matrix? Of course, I know who they are …but as far as like working through [Maddox’s] campaign and race and all that, no, not at all,” he said. “It was on behalf of the citizens because I feel the need for the citizens to know the truth. We didn’t slander Sue Bell Cobb; we made her eat her own words.”

Where’s the receipts?

While Chaverst touts the successes of his company, there are several issues. Chaverst Strategies has not filed incorporation papers with the Alabama secretary of state.

A search of business records on the secretary of state’s website shows that Chaverst reserved the name “Chaverst Strategies” in October 2018 but did not register the business.

It’s not the only business purported to be established by Chaverst that cannot be independently verified.

He also says he owns an ice cream truck under the business name Chaverst Mobile Creamery, but there are no records of a business with that name with the secretary of state’s office. The Jefferson County Health Department, which conducts inspections of food trucks, has never inspected a business named Chaverst Mobile Creamery.

Chaverst's Facebook page for Chaverst Mobile Creamery features this ice cream truck

‘My businesses run themselves’

Chaverst said his companies have enabled him to devote all his time to protesting, and that his businesses haven’t been a distraction as he aims to disrupt Hoover following Bradford’s killing.

“My businesses run themselves. I have my strategy firm,” he said. “I can sleep all day long if I choose to.”

Chaverst denies claims by some critics that he takes money to protest certain issues.

Hezekiah Jackson IV, the former head of the Metro Birmingham NAACP who was ousted in September, for his alleged role in the North Birmingham EPA scandal, was a feather in Chaverst’s cap.

Jackson said protesters with high profiles draw the interest of nefarious interests who seek to hire the gadflies to influence their own agendas. In a video where Chaverst and other activists confronted Jackson outside the Birmingham federal courthouse over the summer, Jackson said, “most of the style that you’re all operating on I brought into town in my former life.”

Jackson said he had no inside knowledge that Chaverst was being paid for his protest activities, and Chaverst denied being paid, but Jackson said his background in organizing demonstrations gives him insight into how the world of Birmingham activism operates. Jackson also denied taking money.

“I was just talking about the current style that he has. We started that all the way back in the ’70s when the police killed Bonita Carter in Kingston,” Jackson said, referring to the shooting death that galvanized Birmingham’s black community and helped usher in the city’s first black mayor and police chief.

Jackson said the effectiveness of the movement perked up the ears of the city’s major players in business and politics.

“With Bonita Carter --- we were really activists, but we found out as we moved along in the 70s, we were approached by people if we would take on their causes for pay,” the former NAACP head said. “And a lot of those same entities are still around so I don’t think they changed their M.O.”

Asked to name those entities, Jackson laughed and then declined. But he said they include law firms, lobbyists and major corporations.

‘We actually make stuff happen here’

It’s difficult to quantify the impact of Chaverst’s protests, but he takes credit for the results, such as the resignations of Jackson and Birmingham Water Works General Manager Mac Underwood, who stepped down Wednesday.

Underwood, who could not be reached for comment for this story, maintained he was resigning to pursue other opportunities, but the utility has been under a storm of controversy amid the indictment of its former president, Sherry Lewis. Lewis also declined to talk to AL.com.

“Contrary to what people think, we actually make stuff happen here,” Chaverst said. “We have really done a lot of work here in just a short period of time.”

Chaverst is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Trump, the Trump campaign and the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex that claims the then-presidential candidate created an atmosphere that led to the alleged assault of protester Mercutio Southhall during a November 2015 campaign rally. Southhall and Chaverst are seeking damages north of $1 million on the grounds of negligence, recklessness, assault incitement to riot and other charges. Attorneys for Trump and the BJCC sought to get the case dismissed in late May and early June. Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Carole Smitherman has yet to rule on the motions.

Besides fighting Trump in the courtroom, Chaverst has also organized protests in Birmingham against the president. When Trump ordered the controversial ban of travelers from the Middle East to the United States nearly a month after he took office, Chaverst led a demonstration at Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport through baggage claim and the ticketed areas.

Other protests and issues that Chaverst has participated in include:

∗ A Black Lives Matter protest in Kelly Ingram Park in July 2016

∗ Interrupting a police press conference in Homewood to question the arrest of a black woman at Walmart

∗ Getting into an argument with Fairfield police after an officer was caught on video punching a man at a gas station. Chaverst was arrested for the confrontation.

∗ Calling for the resignation of Jefferson County School Board Member Donna Pike for sharing a racist image of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Pike ultimately kept her job.

∗ Protesting a Birmingham Subway after an employee was videotaped making a racist rant that went viral. The employee was fired.

28 Protesters shut down I-459 in Hoover

As for the Hoover demonstrations, Chaverst said he and other demonstrators have no plans to hang up their protest shoes, claiming neither the city nor the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency are meeting its demands of releasing video of the shooting and to have the mayor and police chief resign.

“There is nothing that’ll get us to stop because it looks like they’re not going to budge,” he said.