History In the Making With Protests

I share history with Robyn and Jacob all the time—sometimes more than they would like. Whether it’s family history or world history, they get it all. Often times, these bits of knowledge coincide with school studies because school standard history books tend to omit some important parts of history especially for people of color.

In grade school, the history books always detailed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent method of leadership as a way of advancing civil rights. Some even mentioned Malcolm X, but in brevity, giving no background to his evolution in life.

Living in Georgia and in close proximity to Atlanta, I grew up knowing about the civil rights giants there because they were often seen and heard—Dr. Joseph Lowery, Maynard Jackson, Julian Bond, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Jackson, Hosea Williams, John Lewis, all of whom marched and supported MLK.

As a teenager active in my father’s family church, Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church, I remember being selected to represent our district at a A.M.E. Conference held at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Atlanta. It was three activity-filled days among thousands of people. Exciting times for a young teen that produced one of my fondest memories to date. I had ventured across the street to the exhibition center where hundreds of vendor booths were set up offering products and knowledge.

As I made the rounds with a few other delegates, a middle-aged man approached us, told us to turn around and gaze at what appeared to be 60ish black woman smiling brilliantly. The man then asked us, “who is that?” We looked at each other, looked at her and then back at him. He smiled and said, “That’s THE Rosa Parks.”

Stunned we turned our attention back to her who was still smiling and nodding her head. As I examined her closely, it did indeed look like an aged version of the woman I had only seen in pictures from the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott. We asked a few questions, got an autograph, and went about our way content from the rest of the day.

Fast forward, it wasn’t until college that I truly learned about the contributions of Angela Davis, Marcus Garvey, Shirley Chisholm, Cesar Chavez, Madame C.J. Walker, Evita Peron, Huey Newton….

History is important. It gives us blueprint of how to avoid the failures of the past while also trying repeat its successes. As a youth I was always told by my elders that if you don’t know and understand where you come from then you will never really know where you’re going. Growing up “brown” in the America south, means many things. There are survival lessons that parents had to teach, and still must, like a rite of passage for young people of color.

My dear Jacob was 10 months old when 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was shot in the dead of night in 2012. I thought to myself then, how will I ever let him leave the house alone without fear. I had the same exact thought for my now nine year-old when I saw the video of Ahmaud Arbery being shot in broad daylight this February in our own backyard to speak.

Events of this nature always take me back in history to the lynching of 14 year-old Emmett Till for a baseless accusation in 1955 Mississippi. That historic lynching especially came to mind when the Central Park bird watching incident transpired on this Memorial Day, the same day as George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

As a youth, I remember my sister Karen’s favorite movie was Mississippi Burning, a poignant film about systemic racism in a small Mississippi town in the 1960s. It was gory but very powerful, watching it would made my stomach turn while taking me on a roller coaster of emotions. We didn’t have cable in the “boonies” back then so we would rent movies from the Video Center, where I got my teenage job…a big shout out to “Miss Becky” and Lee.

Anyway, it seemed like every other weekend my mom would rent that movie for my sister and she would watch it at least twice during each rental. I didn’t get why Karen liked it so much and certainly why my mother kept allowing her to watch it over and over. It wasn’t a feel good happy film and it was based on some despicable real life events.

It wasn’t until years later that I understood both of their points of view. My sister watched it repeatedly because it was a constant reminder of a not-so-distant past and a motivator for change in the future. My mom allowed her to watch it because it vividly displayed true events that no parent of color could bare to detail to their young.

I have been watching with intent and some worry, the events that have happened and still are since Covid-19 quarantined our lives in March. After literally seeing the demise of Arbery and Floyd on video and hearing the details about the Breonna Taylor death, as a parent of two black youth I decided it was time for another history lesson.

Robyn, Jacob, and I have been watching many of the protests nationwide for more than week now as they have dominated prime time television. In explaining that protest can be good and productive, I let them know that destroying businesses does no one any good and you end up paying for it in the end. They saw an angry Atlanta Mayor in real time when looters hijacked her city. They heard T.I. refer to his hometown as Wakanda and saw a tearful Killer Mike urge violent protesters to find a different way.

We were watching as part of the protesting element in Atlanta destroyed a downtown Starbucks and Robyn leaped from the sofa while screaming at the TV, “No. What are you doing? Stop this! Not the Starbucks.” Then she asked me, “what can we do about this?”

I told her that there was nothing we could do about that Starbucks in that moment and that she should have the same vigor in opposition to the loss of innocent lives as she did about that looting. In very certain terms, I told her that she had all the power to arm herself with knowledge and make a difference along with other like-minded individuals in the future.

As the protests continued daily, I considered taking them to one but not at night and not one with the National Guard on hand. So when a cohort questioned me last Thursday about going to the Saturday Covington protest which was a continuation of its Wednesday protest, I said why not.

She, her boyfriend, and his two kids were going and suggested that my brood and I join them. We would make the perfect yin-yang group and she had never been to a protest before and was all geeked about it. Masked up we went, all was well, and my friend and my kids got their feet wet with their first protest.

There are some who don’t get the mentality behind the nationwide protests (peaceful and otherwise) that flaunt the face of Floyd. But it’s not about one man that died unjustly, it’s about the collective brown bodies that have paid the price of racism down the line beginning as early as 1839 aboard La Amistad. If we are honest with ourselves about race in American history, it began with the Constitution when people of color were classified as one-fifth of a person to their Caucasian counterpart, in addition to having no right to vote (along with women).

For all these reasons and so many more, I teach my kids that history is indeed important. Without knowledge of history, we cannot improve upon our futures. I pray we all work together for a better future for everyone!