A Note On the 60th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday

An Indictment On White Folk

Barack Obama tweeted, "60 years ago, a group of brave civil rights organizers marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in the pursuit of justice and equality."

Surely, it is important to remember to recall the ways in which our Ancestors, parents, grandparents (perhaps some of you reading this) have sacrificed and endured in this unending journey to full emancipation, citizenship and political and economic equity. We must never forget. Indeed, we must always re-member this moments; because even as we forget, the body keeps the score across generations. Epigenetics are real ya’ll.

We're also reminded of the terroristic tendencies of white folks; when threatened with the possibility of equity. The children and grandchildren of those badged and deputized citizens--who engaged in domestic terrorism, bashing the heads of peaceful protesters, and running them down on horseback--are running our governments, our schools, our universities, our law firms, our courts, our hospitals, our banks, our military, our jails, our police departments, our public utilities, our doctors’ offices, our professional licensing boards, and our businesses today; and if not in charge, are attempting to beat the equity, the Black, the Indigenous, the Queer, the Women, unprivileged, the Latine et al...out of them.

There is nothing new under the sun that shines of above, or the Son who looks down from on high. We must be students of history; lest we imprisoned in a cycle of stunned reactions to violations--and illogical rhetorics--leaving us bloodied, dispossessed and unalived.

Put differently, I’m writing this short missive not because we should shy away from honoring and remembering our Ancestors for what was sacrificed; but rather we should have an equal focus on what was stolen and who stole. It is not enough to recall how John Lewis’ head was split wide open. No, we must state and say that his head was cracked wide open by white police officers employed by the Blackest state in the nation. We must say that 60 years ago, on this day, white people decided Black people needed to be (re)taught a lesson. 60 years ago, on this day, white citizens and white officers and white elected officials and white mayors and white governors and everyday white folks engaged in domestic terrorism against Black men and women, boys and girls, children barely old enough to tie their own shoes…because they dared to ask for equity, for full emancipation, for full citizenship in the United States of America, as guaranteed—explicitly—by the U.S. Constitution under the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments; made manifest by a war on those very lands.

To put a COGIC—Church of God in Christ—point on it. We must also continue to memorialize the routine domestic terrorism of white people who don’t get their way. We must also continue to memorialize the routine domestic terrorism of white people who are hellbent on subordinating others. We must also continue to memorialize the routine domestic terrorism of white people who engage in violence so unspeakable, routinized and pervasively common, it inspired Hitler. We must also memorialize the routine domestic terrorism of white people who engage in violence to maintain the current social order because they know they cannot compete, compare or contend.

The civil rights movement was a response to the day to day moves of incivil and uncivilized white folks; hellbent on holding on to the inheritance of the power and privilege to subordinate, bequeathed to them from via founding white supremacist, sexist, enslaving, genocidal, settler colonialist fathers (and mothers) and made manifest through chattel slavery and the ongoing regime of Amerikkkan apartheid and racial capitalism.

We must never forget; for forgetfulness is a privilege we cannot afford and a demand only made to remand us to the position of the plantation and absolve them of sins never recanted nor repented. Look and remember. Look and remember. Look and remember. Look and remember and steel yourself for the violence of this inheritance made manifest in the White House and state houses across the nation.