Walking steadily: a right on to Washington, D.C.’s Michigan Ave, Jimi bolting for the fire hydrant, gospel begins to play. Simple pleasures of walks outside, which all should be able to enjoy, are not only a refugee from the trappings of working from home but a constant reminder: I am a target. To Jimi, my standard poodle puppy, worlds rest in a walk, there is no awareness of how hard it has become for his dad to bring him outside — the fear of seeing a police car, of not knowing if that will be the moment. I noticed a Black man walking his pup, who looked like Jimi, so I paid even more attention across the street from us. I have no idea who this person is, but we both had to stop, wave, and shout a simple: you good? I remember everything about this person I’ll probably never encounter again. His Black Lives Matter face covering, Adidas pants, grey tank top, all of it seared into my memory — just in case. I could tell he examined me too. There was a deep connection between us, which required studying our compositions — it was if we wanted to be sure the other knew: “I see you. I hope you keep living.” I wonder if maybe the experience was altogether different for him, and our encounter was simply a nice human-to-human gesture. I doubt it. We share a collective identity, forged by fire and brimstone, the worst of humanity thrown into our stories, so without knowing each other, we knew all we needed to.
These experiences happen throughout Black America, varying depending on the determined street code and culture, but all in many ways, articulating: “I see you.” Driving through Washington, D.C. or Louisville, Kentucky, or Kenosha, Wisconsin, observe these interactions: intimate and delicate, tender and affirming, brisk, and wholesome. These moments are of instant connection and a heartfelt plea for each other’s safety. Being created, in the minds of this nation, a problem — living in an emotional and perpetual state of fear — cultivated the requisite for such intimate interactions. Across America, and the entire world, we Black people yearn to live and breathe freely. From those who create us a problem — a constant state of a nightmare, a reminder of their mediocrity — we seek to escape. But, to where? What is the promised land for those under the boot of hatred and tyranny — where is the heaven, when the earth is hell?
There have been twelve days this year without state-sponsored police murder — but every day, the community fills with the images and feelings of the harvest of such demonization, of shame — there is no escape for a Black person in America. After witnessing another Black person shot, this time seven times in the back, walking away, what do we do with the fueled contempt and unexplainable fear it creates? Not even our dreams are safe — infiltrated with all too real nightmare scenarios — so where do we go, and what do we tell the children?
Jacob Blake lives to tell his story — of survival despite the extraordinary attempts to destroy body — but what of his mind, soul, and children bore witness? Black death has become commercial, even our grief is profitable, but there is no death: only life. So, their father won’t be on billboards or Vanity Fair covers; instead, he will be criminalized and made to bear the weight of the crimes committed onto him. Again, I ask, what do we tell the children? My mind is puzzled, heart tormented, what to say, in the face of such injustice and hurt, because it has been said for centuries. Moving forward, without the veil of brutality in nightmares alone, is a debilitating thing. Yet, we know all we can do is keep on keeping on — like those who crossed oceans and toiled the land, whose groans fill the air even to this day — that is who we are: a people who move. For those of us, on this side of the dying, what do we do?
As we move through, as targets, without recompense or refuge — except through death — what shall we say in those intimate moments to offer comfort? Where do we tell those in need of safety to go? If we outrun police on American cities’ battlefield, as our faith dwindles with each manifestation of state violence, where then do we run? Our homes? Breonna Taylor was not safe. Schools? Children thrown to the ground during class by “peace” officers have never felt safe in schoolhouses. Hospitals? Black women dying during childbirth at higher rates than any other group, except the indigenous women often forgotten, are not safe from healthcare professionals. Oh, indeed, the Church — a place of sanctuary and worship in this supposed Christian nation — should offer safety? Rev. Clementa Pinckney and eight others hastened to Zion, could never feel the safety our Savior found in the manger. Alas, where do we run for safety?
After sunup to sundown toiling land, our ancestors would whisper prayers, meditations, and dreams into the earth. If we put our ears to the dirt, to blood-soaked ground, those prayers and dreams can be heard clear as day. They dropped generational wisdom and resilience — compelling us to hold fast — through the generational trauma we would indeed inherit. Nikki Giovanni extolled, Martin’s dream was whispered into the earth’s belly centuries before he declared freedom ringing, bits dropped for us to pick up. In our despair, answers so desperately longed for — an understanding of all this hell and torment — we must find time to listen to the moans inside the earth. We have to tell our children something for them to survive as long as they can, and I keep looking for the answers, for my sisters, for my potential children — I don’t know what to tell them. I asked the trees outside my home: “You stand there, despite all this trauma we humans cause you, what do we say to our children?
Trees have so much to tell us; our history on this land is intertwined with their existence, we are inseparable. Strange hanging fruit, we hung, ‘Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.’ Trees heard the last prayer of the lynched and the groans of communities’ grief — witness to our worst moments and have held us during the whip’s brutality — they have something to teach. Tree leaves, pointed a certain way, let the escaped know the way to go during a particular time of day. Trees have long bore witness to our liberation journey, to them I look, for some answers because I have to tell the children something. We have to give the living something to hold on to before they fall to despair, so quickly done, and almost impossible to run from. There is a spiritual, one many of us have heard, it says:
Before I’d be a slave
I’d be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord
And be saved.
Before we ever go backward, allowing our children to suffer under the same weight of injustice, we must resist and fight the formulation in their minds that they are a problem. Knowing full well — raising generations of Black people who know their power, grace, resilience, and grit can lead to death — we will only know freedom with our Lord. We should not have to die, for Black liberation, but if we do, it will be because we refuse to be slaves, we refuse to be cast a problem. We choose to fight.
In the minds of those reconciled to see us only as once held property, there is no accepting this Black life, so they try and root us out. Hard as the oppressor tries to keep us back — redlining, mass incarceration, state violence, healthcare, and economic inequity — we rise with the tenacious spirit of that woman called Moses, who risked it all for her people. Each instance, they are met with a generational resistance and strategy, passed down through those whispers in the earth, something they will never find, for they wouldn’t know where to look for grace. Our ancestors and those still leaning on that solid rock cry out amid terrible conditions:
Hush, hush somebody’s calling my name
Hush, hush somebody’s calling my name
Hush, hush somebody’s calling my name
O my Lord, o my Lord, what shall I do?
These songs are what we have. A Spirit realm groan, calling us to deal with what’s in front of us today. In a miraculous moment, a change has come, our ancestors revealing more of those moans that guide us through. Maybe it was their groan which made my interaction with that man and his dog so intimate — so needed. We are both bound to bear witness, like the roots of a steadfast tree, for the birth of prayer, mediation or dream spoke into the earth. Things that knew nothing of what was to come, only of what was already done, carry us through. Cries and Spirit groans carry us down the river Jordan to the promised land. The moan of the seemingly innocent children’s song: This little light of mine/I’m going to let it shine, to say: I will live, despite. Through our bodies, each other’s, and ancestors — dreams whispered into the earth and witness bared by those poplar trees — we will live. That’s what I will tell the children.
