Renewing in Hope
In This Issue: Guest Editor’s Letter, Black History Month 2024 — the Wrap-Up (Tapestry Poems, Articles, Editorial, and Newsletters), and a quote by Tony Ross.
Guest Editor’s Letter
Way back in 2020, a man struggling to regain mastery of his life entered a convenience store to buy something he needed. It’s not clear what happened next because there is no record of the conversation he had with the clerk, nor is there evidence of his alleged behavior. We know a lot about his past, both the good and the bad, but curiously, we do not know exactly what transpired in that convenience store.
But we do know this: he was then accosted by the police, who proceeded to take him down to the ground and kneel on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds until he was dead. He cried out for help to those who had given him life and who had always believed in and loved him. Those who surrounded him as spectators tried to intervene, but the police prevented them. Those who came to help him as trained medical professionals were also denied, and so George Floyd spent the last ten minutes of his life in terror, pleading for his life, with one police officer ensuring his death and three others watching him die.
We know more about those last ten minutes than how most people die at the hands of the police because there were a few people who recorded the events and then shared the unedited, unpolished, un-explained-away video with the world.
That video of Floyd’s death started a fire that circled the world. Protests broke out in many cities, not just in the United States of America but in many other countries, as ordinary citizens, enraged at the ease of inflicting death upon Black people by police who casually choked a man to death, came together en masse to say “Stop! Enough!”
The “Black Lives Matter” movement was part of this protest, and the reaction this time to the acceptable brutality of Black people by the police wasn’t just a shrug or even a prayer of thanks to God for escaping the same fate.
This time, the protest was enough to move the nation. Politicians spoke out against it and started working on laws to prevent this type of police brutality. Faith leaders spoke out against this and began a renewed search to understand how their faith had turned them away from empathy and compassion toward the oppressed. Communities began to investigate their own responses to the lives of Black people in their midst more deeply.
Corporations responded by pledging support for increasing their employment of Black people and increasing their sales outreach to the Black community. Some posted commitments to this and promised to promote Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, or DEI, going so far as to set up business units whose purpose it was to implement this commitment in their employment, from interviewing and hiring candidates to promotions that acknowledge the reality of holding back Black people by simply choosing white candidates.
Even schools across the nation responded by not just talking about diversity but setting up courses and majors that included an emphasis on DEI.
Read the full article at Our Human Family.
Black History Month 2024
Tapestry Poems
“Frederick Douglass,” A Tapestry poem by Sylvia Wohlfarth
“To All the Beautiful Black Women,” A Tapestry poem by Sherry Kappel
“So Tell Me, What Type of Racist Are You,” A Tapestry Poem by Jesse Wilson
Articles
Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism, by Rebecca Berry
Why Black History Month 2024 is the Most Important Ever, by William Spivey
Editorials
Anger, Racism, and Black Women, by Sherry Kappel
Black History Yesterday, Today, and Forever, by Clay Rivers
Newsletters
Anger, Racism, and Black Women In This Issue: Editor’s Letter, “Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism,” “Let’s Talk Black Excellence, People,” and a quote by Thurgood Marshall.
Black History Yesterday, Today, and Forever In this issue: Editor’s Letter: “On Black History writ large and small in the world and in our lives,” “Why Black History Month 2024 is the Most Important Ever,” “Are You Old, Daddy?” “More on Black History,” and a quote from Michelle Obama.
Read more on Black History, along with various topics in our Reading List.
What Do You Have to Say About It?
Tired of inequities, inequalities, and racism? Help us eradicate it! Send us your most convincing argument in essay or poetic form. Tell us why Black folks are great! Set the history straight! Describe a life-changing experience! We want to hear it all.
Send your polished drafts to Submissions@ourhumanfamily.org.
Final Thoughts
