A Modern Day Lynching: #ahmaudarbrey

It's called a "lynching" by a person I follow on Facebook. He is an author, pastor, and justice advocate. I saw a lynching yesterday. I saw it again and again.

America has a harsh history with people of color. Ask Black Americans about plantations, auction blocks, and lynching trees. Ask American Indians about their trails of tears. It appears that we have created another means of destroying people of color, that is, white people destroying Black people. That history is still true.

The gruesome and brutal video and the death of Ahmaud Arbrey had completed slipped past me, I think due to the oppression of living in the days of COVID-19. I wasn't paying attention. Apparently, neither were a lot of us. America is now paying attention.

In the old days, and not that many years ago, this picture shows what we did. "Lynching as public spectacle" is something I have read and written about. Another form of "social control," another notion I've written about.  Today's lynchings are different. They are less obvious, but to many of us, they are still obvious. Listen to the stories of the families of the lynched and you'll hear.

Yes, that picture there to the right is brutal to see. Look at the bystanders. They could have been you or me if we'd lived uncritiqued at the time. Those folks look like they are at a picnic.

These days, we use other means of harming people. There are many phrases for the contexts of these heinous offenses, driving while Black, farming while Black, and now, this one, jogging while Black. Living while Black may get you killed.

Ahmaud Arbrey was gunned down two months ago as he jogged through the neighborhood. It is caught on video and in a 911 call. The video is deeply distressing. The sounds of those guns remind me of the days when I went deer or turkey hunting, but never human hunting. It is painful to hear and see. I think white America needs to see what a present day lynching looks like.

The story is captured in numerous places, but it is Shaun King who refused to let this man's murder get dropped. Finally, after two months, the DA is pressing for an investigation and for it to go to the grand jury which does not meet again until June. Here is Shaun King's twitter page that contains the brutal video. 

The man was jogging. Unarmed. He looked like someone who'd been looking in houses under construction. The two armed guys went driving after him. Apparently a third guy followed and was filming on a camera. There is some evidence that the film taker was passing it around. Like a trophy?

Did he also have a gun ready to use? The odds were stacked. Three white guys with guns. One Black guy in his running shoes.

For a heavy conversation about this event and its many, many implications, please listen to Loki Mulholland, award winning film maker, and Freedom Rider, Luvaghn Brown, discuss this heinous situation and the root causes of this madness that white people perpetrate on Black people.

If this were reversed, a white guy jogging and murdered by two, or three, Black guys, I think we'd be up in arms. Sadly enough, that's how we roll in our world. And it's sad to have to make that comparison to get some of us to think.

I think it's time for us to be up in arms about senseless killing of Black people doing whatever any normal person would be doing. Living.

Say his name. #ahmaudarbrey. #ahmaudarbrey.

We have much work to do. Living while Black should not be a crime. Yes, we have much work to do.

A Late Christmas, or Is It an Early One?

We have been looking forward to today for quite some time.  Ever since we read of the Denton Black Film Festival, it has been at the very top of our to-go list.  So, today, we'll drive over to Denton late morning, find a good place for lunch, and then attend a series of events at the Campus Theater, downtown at 214 West Hickory.  

We'll view College Student Short films, "Talking in Black America," see "The Uncomfortable Truth," see the short film "Black Reparations," and perhaps stay for Steps.

Why you may be asking would the two of us venture into these particular waters?  Thank you for asking and thank you for taking the time to read my response and even to check out some of the links.

As mentioned in the previous blogpost, to some readers here, it may be a new thing to find your friend, Waymon Hinson, and his wife as well, involved in social justice sorts of things.  Our involvement goes back to 1994 when I heard an aristocratic voice at the other end of the line say, "Dr. Hinson, I think I have failed to communicate to you the seriousness of our concerns."  And he was correct. I was clueless.  I think America is clueless.  While some of that winding journey is chronicled in other places, this blog, chapel at Abilene Christian University, in one publication, and in several presentations at BFAA Land Loss Summits, now another part of the story is developing.

This post is getting too long, so let me brief it up a bit.

For several months now, I have been working on a project, "African American Land Acquisition and Dispossession: Reconstruction to Today." That provides an important background piece. A second layer of it is Shoun Hill, New York City photographer and I will soon develop plans for the making of a documentary on pivotal cases that served to stir the Black Farmer Movement toward the Pigford Class Action Suit. More information on that later.

So, I am a story-teller and a gatherer of stories. Several years ago, when I was interviewing a number of farmers across the land, I told them of my commitment to tell their stories in places and space that they could not or would not go because their stories are worthy of being told. Many of those stories are found in audio and print media in a volume called, "Remembering Tillery's Historical Archives" under the watchful eye of the Concerned Citizens of Tillery 

So, this begins another layer of story-telling, that of film.  I intend to learn from such people as Loki Mulholland who has chronicled the story of his civil rights activist mother, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. Here is information about their foundation.  See this site for more information about the movie. And, today, he will be premiering another documentary on his family, "The Uncomfortable Truth." 

He is the revealer and the teacher. I am his watchful student.

Shoun and I will be the tellers of truth in ways that will likely make us all squirm.

Perhaps if you live in the DFW area, we can meet up in downtown Denton and learn together about various aspects of the righteous cause of story-telling and justice for all of our people.