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Since the murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida during Black History Month in 2012, America has been on edge. The senseless killing and subsequent acquittal of his murderer, outraged the Black community.

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, theres a lot of pain around what happened here, I think its important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesnt go awayThe African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case. President Barack Obama, July 19, 2013

On the day that George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin, Alicia Garza went on Facebook and posted this: I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter Our lives matter. Her friend Patrice Cullors, who was also outraged by the verdict, added a hashtag in her response to Garzas post and #BlackLivesMatter became a thing. Along with their friend Opal Tometi they created what became the Black Lives Matter Movement.

In August 2014, an unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, was shot to death by a White police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. This led to days of unrest around the country and the slogan Black Lives Matter became a part of the American lexicon. Similar deaths before and after Martin and Brown became part of the narrative describing the fact that Black lives are just as valuable as any others. Many Whites responded, naively and insensitively that all lives matter. If all lives really mattered, that would include Black lives.

We know from experience that this is not true. That is not to say that Black lives dont matter, instead it means that it does not appear from the way Black people have been treated for the last four hundred and three years that their lives have mattered. Their bodies and labor have certainly mattered. But their lives have been lived in a place that evidently provided a different standard of value than that given to people referred to as White Americans.

I wanted to contribute historical context to the idea of Black Lives Matter. There is extensive evidence showing that Black peoples lives have not mattered in America. This has been the case since the first kidnapped Africans arrived in 1619.

Knowing that for two hundred forty-six years Blacks were enslaved cannot explain and quantify the lived experience of kidnapped Africans and their generations of kinfolk. That horrible experience has never been told in its entirety, particularly how it helped to build the wealth of the United States. This wealth would be mostly out of reach for those considered black for generations. Historian Edward E. Baptist in his book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, said it best.

The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.

The offspring of the enslaved Africans have continued to be treated differently than any other group. The condition of the Black community in 2022 is connected directly to our beginnings in this country. Although people like to say, that was a long time ago it really was not. America is a young nation. The last of the enslaved Africans had children who just died in the last few decades.

Through generations, Americans passed down their own very specific ways of talking about and treating Black people. Those views are still alive and well today. The mindset of those who wrote the first formal slave law in Massachusetts included seeing Black people as an inferior group, not deserving of equal treatment. Over the course of many years, laws were passed in all of the original thirteen colonies which formalized the legal enslavement of Black people. Even before the slave laws made it explicitly clear that Blacks were going to be enslaved, we must remember that practically every African coming to this country came across the Atlantic on slaving ships whether their condition after arriving was as a lifelong slave or not.

Slavery was not the end of the devaluation of Blacks. The value White society placed on Black bodies did not match the value Black people have seen in themselves. On her 2017 book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, In the Building of a Nation, Diana Ramey Berry clearly asserts this point.

Historically, black bodies in the United States have represented two competing values: one ascribed to the internal self and the other the external body. White valuation of the black body under slavery is one of the most dramatic examples of the latter. An enslaved person had individual qualities that enslavers evaluated, appraised, and ultimately commodified through sale. Yet enslaved people had a different conception of their value

Years after their legal enslavement by the millions ended, Whites across the country debated the future and value of Black people in America. There were plans by both Lincoln and Jefferson to colonize freed Blacks outside the country.

George Washington Williams wrote in, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 (Vol. 2) in 1883 that the earliest members of the American Colonization Society proposed colonization of free Blacks because, this was the only hope of the free Negro; that the proscription everywhere directed against his social and intellectual endeavors cramped and lamed him in the race of life

Lincoln later asserted a similar point when speaking to a group of Black leaders he invited to the White House in 1862.

You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.

Contrary to what most of us learned in history class about the period known as Reconstruction, it was one of the bloodiest periods in American history. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as the Freedmens Bureau kept detailed records of the beatings, rapes, and murders Blacks suffered after they gained their freedom. The new governments set up during Reconstruction passed the amendments which ended slavery, gave Blacks citizenship and Black men the right to vote.

This did not protect them from the incredible violence of the people who had formerly kept them in shackles.

I have classified these outrages as follows: Twenty-three cases of severs and inhuman beating and whipping of men; four of beating and shooting; two of robbing and shooting; three of robbing; five men shot and killed; two shot and wounded; four beaten to death one beaten and roasted; three women assaulted and ravished; four women beaten; two women tied up and and whipped until insensible; two men and their families beaten and driven from their homes, and their property destroyed; two instances of burning of dwellings, and of one inmate shot. Report by Freedmens Bureau official in Kentucky

Historian Leon Litwack in his book, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, wrote about the change in the value of Black bodies after the Civil War ended.

Before the war, a Tennessee farmer explained, the slave was so much property. It was as if you should kill or maim my horse. But now the nigger has no protection.

This lack of protection would play out over several decades with Blacks being lynched across the country and dozens of anti-black race riots being carried out by Whites across the country. I will discuss the details of those in a later piece in this series.

Physical violence would only be a small part of the devaluation of Black lives moving into the twentieth century. Legalized segregation, known as Jim Crow laws would help to marginalize the lives of Black people even one hundred years after Lincolns famous Emancipation Proclamation supposedly gave them freedom.

The years after the Civil Rights Movement was supposed to be a post-racial America. It was not. Racism was and is alive and well.

It is hard to understand the psychological trauma suffered by Black people over dozens of generations. Imagine being kidnapped from the place of your birth, placed in shackles and transported across the Atlantic Ocean in the most horrific conditions imaginable. Upon your arrival in a strange new land, you soon discover that you will be enslaved along with your family until the day that you die. You will be forcibly separated from your friends and family at the whim of any given White person. You will watch your wife, sister and mother be raped right in front of you, knowing that you can do nothing about it because White people appear to have all the guns in the world.

Dr. Joy DeGruy wrote about this generational trauma in, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: Americas Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. The book is described as:

Dr. DeGruy first exposes the reader to the conditions that led to the Atlantic slave trade and allowed the pursuant racism and efforts at repression to continue through present day. She then looks at the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that African Americans faced as the result of the slave trade. Next she discusses the adaptive behaviors they developed both positive and negative that allowed them to survive and often even thrive. Dr. DeGruy concludes by reevaluating those adaptive behaviors that have been passed down through generations and where appropriate. She explores replacing behaviors which are today maladaptive with ones that will promote, and sustain the healing and ensure the advancement of African American culture.

If you closely study the way Black people interact with one another today it is clear to see that for some, Black lives dont matter. We see nearly daily across the country the impact of the devaluation of Black lives manifest itself in self-destructive behavior that is a way to cope with the low self-esteem which some have internalized. I will discuss this in more detail in the article which looks at devaluation in Science and Medicine.

This is just small part of the story of how Black lives have been devalued in America. I will explore this devaluation in laws and politics, our so-called justice system, education and culture. Im constantly learning more, and re-educating myself. The journey is never ending. It is my hope that this series will enlighten those who have been in the dark about how the lives of Black people have been devalued in this country.

This is the first step for many in trying to understand the current state of the Black community. It should not be the last. You will clearly see the tremendous strength and resiliency that has been on display and passed down by generations of Africans in America as we have survived in a land and among a people who have continued to devalue us.

Our stories matter. Our lives matter. When will America and Americans acknowledge this?

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Do Black Lives Matter? Part 1: An introduction to the historical devaluation of Black people - Milwaukee Independent

A gathering at Greater St. Marks Family Church in St. Louis on August 12, 2012, to discuss Michael Browns death. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

This aint your grandparents civil-rights movement! Rapper Tef Poe yelled from the stage of the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis on October 12, 2014. Several of us stood in solidarity and turned our backs on the religious leaders who organized the rally in the wake of Michael Browns killing at the hands of white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The Black church, once the moral compass of African American politics, would not lead this new generation of protest.

But the exodus from church is not a flight from faith. It is an escape from the bondage of patriarchy, queer-antagonism, and respectability politics that have long plagued the religious terrain. Activists are embracing other pathways through the wilderness of racial oppression. We are leaving in search of a practice[s] that is overtly inclusive of our sexuality, ancestral practices, and race, Meagan Jordan wrote for the Black Youth Project. While we may not be going to church in the traditional sense, we are gathering together in unique spaces.

Jordan invites us to question the question: Where is the church in Black Lives Matter? What if, in our search for the church, we miss the spirit erupting beyond its walls?

On August 9, 2014, just hours after Mike Browns killing in Ferguson, Missouri, local residents adorned the stretch of Canfield Drive where the teenagers lifeless body lay face down for over four hours. Many brought flowers, candles, teddy bears, balloons, cards, and photographs. Some poured out liquor and placed the empty bottles between bouquets and baseball caps. Others paid their respects with prayer or a moment of silence.

As protests exploded across the country, the makeshift memorial blossomed into a beloved community. Activists planted signs that read Hands Up Dont Shoot and End Police Brutality! Vigils around the shrine sparked actions across the city. Mourners stood silently for four and a half minutes to symbolize the four and a half hours that the police left Mikes bleeding body on the street, baking in the summer sun. Mothers wept. Healers burned sage. Protesters formed circles, joined hands, and chanted Black lives matter and Mike Brown means we got to fight back!

The street memorial was a sacred place of political struggle. And it embodied the spiritual life of contemporary activism.

Black Lives Matter is spiritually promiscuous. It embraces a range of rituals: ancestral worship, call-and-response, chanting, libation, prayer, mysticism, the lighting of incense. Each does its own work. Chanting releases rage. Prayer offers comfort. Magic possesses the dispossessed with faith in the miraculous. Call-and-response turns a Lil Boosie song into a movement anthem. Libation transforms Hennessy into holy water. And all articulate a refusal to give death the last word. It is a makeshift spiritual practice rooted in a love of justice and a reverence for the sanctity of Black lives.

In Toni Morrisons novel Beloved, a stunning scene unfolds when a community of freedmen and former slaves assembles in the woods. After a moment of prayer, Baby Suggs slams her stick on the ground and beckons everyone to let loose. A frenzy ensues. Children laugh. Men dance. Women wail. And, before long, their twisting hips and roaring laughter and salty tears melt into an ecstatic choreography of praise and protest. After the earth settles, Baby Suggs the 70-year-old unchurched preacher addresses the multitude who, every Saturday afternoon, carry their scarred backs and calloused hands into the clearing. Here, she said, in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard.

The sermon is short and the message is clear: Only love can save us.

The ring shout, as Morrison masterfully depicts it, is among the earliest forms of African American resistance. A remix of African religions and Black Christianity, the shout! was a spiritual triumph where enslaved and free Blacks stole away in back woods and danced counterclockwise, as the ring leaders voice thundered into the night and the groups collective voice hollered back. Facing the evil of chattel slavery, without redress from the courts or access to the classroom, Black folk created religious rituals to seek solace, honor ancestors, assert a sense of self-regard, and dream of better days.

The ring shout was a circle of life drawn from the shadows of death.

The ritual faded as Black religion in America formalized. But its essential elements echo throughout African American music, dance, religion, and activism. Just spin the records of Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Billie Holiday, Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar, and Young Thug, and youll hear the rhapsodic sorrow of the blues, the improvisational genius of jazz, the supreme virtuosity of hip-hop, and a trap rapper mumbling his way through the tradition. Or attend Sunday service at a Black church and glimpse the Holy Ghost enchanting the feet of elders as the preacher cries out for a witness. Or join a protest against racial violence and let the shout ring through your body.

This is my testimony. In the middle of Canfield Drive, standing at Mikes memorial, I got lost in the ring. As protesters chanted and loved ones lit candles and strangers became comrades and a community gathered to mourn and rebel, I was possessed with the spirit of freedom and the truth that another world is possible. And, as Baby Suggs demanded, I loved it. I loved it hard.

Ferguson exploded two months after I graduated from seminary, and I felt called to do something. Following the legacy of the 1961 Freedom Rides to challenge racial segregation, activists Darnell Moore, Patrisse Cullors, and others organized Black Life Matters Freedom Rides from over 12 cities to help turn a local rebellion into a national movement. Eager to turn up, I got on a bus from New York City to St. Louis. Twenty-one hours later, 42 of us arrived at St. Johns United Church of Christ.

We used the sanctuary to conduct teach-ins, strategize campaigns, and prepare for acts of civil disobedience. Several of us slept in the basement where we shared stories of what brought us to Ferguson. Perhaps owing to the setting, some protesters talked about their experiences in church. Many of us had been harmed by pastors and parishioners that professed to love all of Gods children. We knew that a place of refuge for some could be a site of repression for others. And that Black liberation not only requires protesting police violence in the streets and systemic racism throughout society. It means confronting the violence of policing women, queer people, and Black youth in the church and throughout our communities.

For decades, Black preachers have sought to redeem the soul of the country. A new generation of activists is reckoning with the soul of the church. And herein lies the spiritual force of the movement. It calls us to confront the ways we have sinned against each other as we protest the ways others have sinned against us. The need for actions, campaigns, and policy changes while vital for the success of social movements can eclipse the need for what the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called a revolution of values. As important as politics may be: An ethic of love guides us to our North Star.

This is what connects Baby Suggs to Black Lives Matter. Beyond calls to transform a loveless society, both demand that we embody a love that will transform each other. The two make a road we can all travel. To change the world we must remake ourselves and to change ourselves we must remake the world. This is hard work. Most of us will fall short. But if we journey together, we can reach heights even in the valley of death.

I stopped by the memorial before we left Ferguson. The heat was merciless. I imagined Big Mikes body sprawled in the street, blood dripping from his head, as neighbors watched in horror. I thought about Lezley McSpadden, who will spend her holidays grieving her most precious gift. I mourned the days Mike will not see and the secrets he will never have the chance to share.

And as the sun rose and my heart sank into my chest, a small crowd began to assemble. A few people lit candles. Some replaced soiled teddy bears and handed out water, while others stood in silence. Many of us wept. And after a few moments, we all joined hands and formed a circle around the shrine. Children, elders, parents, protesters, clergy, residents, out-of-towners, queer organizers, white activists, Black kids from the neighborhood. It felt like an altar call. Except salvation was not about joining a church or having faith in a higher power. It was about believing that every life is holy and joining a movement that protects the living while mourning the dead.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the January 31, 2022, issue of New YorkMagazine.

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The Religion of Protest: Finding Spirituality in BLM - The Cut

January 29, 2022

Amman Asfaw

By KAREN VELIE

A Black Lives Matter protester was again ordered to either agree to diversion or face trial for false imprisonment related to detaining a driver during a July 21, 2020 BLM march through the streets of San Luis Obispo, during a hearing on Friday.

Amman Asfaws attorney Earl Conaway filed another motion to dismiss, the latest was sought in the furtherance of justice, according to the motion. The filing included a letter of recommendation from Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong.

Conaway touted Asfaws accomplishments as a first-generation U.S. citizen and the racism he has endured. Conaway argued that a car knocked Asfaw down while he was walking in a crosswalk.

Deputy District Attorney Delaney Henretty called Conaways description a gross mischaracterization. Asfaw was not walking across a sidewalk and he was not knocked down he sat down, Henretty said, noting Asfaw detained his alleged victims to force them to hear his message.

What if this was a white supremacist rally that detained Asfaws family? Henretty said. How can you not respect the rights of the pastor and his wife?

Conaway also argued that the charges were politically and racially motivated.

We are free to say this is politically motivated because a judge has found it to be politically motivated, Conaway argued.

In 2020, Judge Matt Guerrero ruled that District Attorney Dan Dow had a clear conflict of interest, and that local prosecutors should be replaced by the California Office of the Attorney General. The state then appealed Guerreros ruling. The appellate court has yet to make a decision.

Near the end of Fridays hearing, SLO County Superior Court Judge Roger Picquet said he looked at all the letters Asfaw provided from the Cal Poly community, the SLO City Council and the community at large. Picquet said he was impressed by Asfaws background.

However, Conaways motion was not based on a fact finding exercise, Picquet said.

In addition, Picquet said Asfaw could have chosen diversion.

In early 2021, Henretty offered misdemeanor diversion to five of the seven defendants charged following the July 21 protest, which means they could have their charges dismissed if they agree to attend classes or do community service. All five defendants declined the offer.

Picquet said it was inappropriate to grant Conaways motion for dismissal. He then set a readiness conference for May 6.

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Black Lives Matter protester again ordered to face trial or diversion - Cal Coast News

David R. Nelson, 54, and Nicole C. Anderson, 43, were charged Jan. 12 with second-degree burglary after they illegally entered an unoccupied house in Walnut Creek with the intent to commit larceny, prosecutors said. Nelson was also charged with two counts of possessing methamphetamine for sale, according to a complaint filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court.

Nelson was allegedly in possession of unspecified amounts of methamphetamine on Dec. 5 and Dec. 22, prosecutors said. Additional details about the alleged crimes were not immediately available.

Nelson and Anderson received national attention two years ago when they were recorded painting over a Black Lives Matter mural in front of the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in Martinez on July 4, 2020. The video, which went viral, showed Anderson pouring black paint on the yellow letters that had been painted on the street during that summers reckoning over racial justice and police violence following the murder of George Floyd.

In the video, Nelson said that the narrative of police brutality, the narrative of oppression, the narrative of racism, its a lie, and that no one wants Black Lives Matter here. Both Nelson and Anderson appear to be white.

The temporary Black Lives Matter mural had been approved by the city of Martinez as a way of sending the message that African Americans and other people of color are equal members of our community, Martinez Mayor Rob Schroder said at the time.

Days after they painted over the mural, Nelson and Anderson were charged with violating another persons civil rights, vandalism and possession of tools to commit vandalism.

Nelson and Anderson could not immediately be reached for comment. They are scheduled to be arraigned on the burglary and drug charges Monday morning.

Andy Picon is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: andy.picon@hearst.com Twitter: @andpicon

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Duo caught on video painting over Black Lives Matter mural in Martinez are now charged with burglary in new case - San Francisco Chronicle

Arthur Ashe Monument in Richmond, Virginia, on June 17, 2020. Photo: Kris Graves c/o Sasha Wolf Projects

Between 7:06 and 7:11 p.m. on June 1, 2020, equipped only with a Bible and the long, muscular arm of history, Donald Trump became a hero.

As fumes from the chemical compound approved by his accomplices officials from the Secret Service; the U.S. Park Police; the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department; the D.C. National Guard; the Federal Bureau of Prisons; the U.S. Marshals Service; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the attorney general of the United States; and the top two commanders of the mightiest military force on the planet began to irritate the eyes, throats, lungs, and skin of nonviolent protesters, the conquering hero posed in front of St. Johns Episcopal Church and hoisted a Bible to the heavens. The president of the United States had just tear-gassed his own peacefully protesting citizens for a photo op. But Trump treated this chaos as if it were the final panel of a historically accurate graphic novel.

For what is America if not an epic story? We have all absorbed, to varying degrees, the basic premise and plot of the great American tall tale. Once upon a time, an innocent group of freedoms-loving people were minding their own business enjoying their freedoms (freedoms is always with an s). Out of nowhere a dark force of freedoms-hating others arose, threatening to steal the peace, tranquillity, and stuff the spunky freedoms-lovers had built with nothing but hard work, ingenuity, and definitely no help from the others. There was only one choice: They had to eliminate the threat posed by the others.

In this myth, Black Lives Matter is simply the youngest descendant of a foe that has bedeviled America since before there was an America, and the Dylann Roofs of this world are the heirs of a long line of white people who have taken up the mantle of violent, deadly anti-Blackness in defense of this American myth.

Attaching oneself to Black peoples desire to be free, equal, or even human has always been seen as a seditious act worthy of violent retribution. At the beginning of the American experiment, it was literally unconstitutional: The Federal Constitution therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixt character of persons and of property, wrote hero, Father of the Constitution, and human trafficker James Madison when debating the value of Black lives in Federalist Paper No. 54. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied.

Even the idea of Black lives mattering was the enemy of this America. In the prequel to our current story, both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were communists bent on a violent overthrow of the American government. So were W.E.B. Du Bois, the Black Panthers, the Freedom Riders, and every Black person who organized a peaceful coalition. In our current chapter, kneeling silently before a football game begins is as much a riot as marching in the streets, and Trumps impromptu tear-gas photo op was simply a throwback to George Wallace sending state troopers to bar Black students from integrating the University of Alabama.

How can you render this tale so that the so-called villains perspective is understood or perhaps embraced? You cant. Not a single Black movement in the history of this country has been universally supported by lawmakers, law enforcers, and white people. You are free to believe that Black people are worthy of their humanity and liberty, but doing something about it means accepting the violent backlash and the collective scorn of a country whose Constitution calculated the value of a Black life at 60 percent of a white one.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the January 31, 2022, issue of New YorkMagazine.

Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now to support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the January 31, 2022, issue of New York Magazine.

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The Lure of White Martyrdom - New York Magazine