A Month in Memoriam: Day 27
Yesterday was another one of those days where no approached me or cocked their head sideways in confusion about the shirt. I suspect — no I am almost certain — when it comes to the fallen sisters, there is less notability and instead more invisibility.
This should not be.
GLOSSRAGS was about five months into its existence when I created a version for us. I say us because as cliche as it sounds, my name could very well end up on this shirt one day alongside Rekia, Sandra and others.
I am not immune to bullets blazing from the barrel of an off-duty officer’s gun or unseen abuse and negligence behind bars.
I did my research on the original of five sisters, making sure I learned the details of their life and death as tediously and meticulously as the original list of six brothers. By September 2014, the shirt was a full-fledged reality.
Since then, the shirts have sold but they’ve always sold at a slower rate than the brothers. I remember running low on shirts memorializing the men while curating pop-up shops across the country last May. I offered the women as an alternative.
“Oh no,” said the black woman looking back at me. “I don’t want that one.”
I prayed to God my face didn’t show the mix of shock and disgust.
This is where I could go off in an all-caps rant about how dangerous it is for a black woman to disregard black women who’ve been murdered which is in turn internalizing misogyny, sexism and degradation (among other things) but I’ll will save that for another time.
I will say, that the deaths of our sisters must not be overlooked.
We too were the strange fruit hanging from trees and we too are the stranger fruit covering the streets.
Our murders must bring forth the same if not louder cries of brothers and sisters out in the street for our male counterparts.
They must cause everyone to want to “shut it down”.
They must make us call for the resignation of officers, DOJ investigations and wrongful death lawsuits.
They must not be forgotten.
Our sisters are dying in ways that are more illusive than our brothers.
Just because we’re not being shot 50 times does not mean that the one bullet that killed us at point blank is less concerning.
Just because we were not viewed as “demon-like” does not mean that our six-foot frame did not strike fear into white men. They dare not say it for fear of doing a disservice to their manhood but trust and believe, Sandra was extraordinary.
When I was arrested for protesting in Baltimore in September, I survived that experience not only because the Baltimore Police Department could not afford to not strap me in the back of that white police van but because of Sandra.
I came out of that jail alive because there would be no explaining to the world how my 24-year-old self — black girl, black woman — hung myself from my cell. There would be no cries of, “I did not commit suicide”.
Sandy guaranteed that I’d emerge from that prison alive.
And it saddens me, it truly saddens me that though I survived, 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen is dead. There will be and have been other sisters whose lives are taken away but whose people will never come to truly say their names.
When will they fight for us like we’ve fought for them?
