A Death Sentence in America: Black Skin
It’s a hard world out there for Black people in America. Especially hard for Black men. When a Black man gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror as he grooms his face, teeth, and hair, he does not know if the executioner will carry out the unspoken death warrant on his life that day.
It is not easy to muster up the strength to walk out the door at the beginning of a new day, even before COVID-2019 arrived in the fall of 2019. The horrors inflicted on Black men in the full light of any given day on any given street in any given park in America sadden my soul.
Early in life, I learned that just because my skin was black, I had an extra burden to carry. I was told this one spring morning in 1956 in the building pictured above. That day my maternal grandmother, with tears in her eyes, explained the cruel reality of Jim Crow to me. This lesson on the nature of the ethos of white supremacy was so unfathomable to my five-year-old brain that I remember Granny’s words and the place she uttered them 63 years later. You could say, that moment in time seared into my mind forever.
“White folks will kill you baby if you get out of your place. I don’t mean to yell at you, but Mamma just wants you safe. You can’t go behind the counter where that cash register is,” she cried.
