I think that numbers aren’t enough to convey the horror of racial terror & violence but I think that they help provide some context. Pay particular attention to the reasons cited for the lynchings. You’ll notice several accusations of rape which as Ida B. Wells noted were usually trumped up charges leveled against black men.

The photo below was one taken by famous photographer Lewis Hine. It was part of a series commissioned by the government to underscore the problem of child labor. It’s interesting to note how the idea of delinquency is also raised.

The caption reads:

Richard Pierce, Western Union Telegraph Co. Messenger No. 2. 14 years of age. 9 months in service, works from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Smokes and visits houses of prostitution. Wilmington, Del., 05/1910

Before yesterday, I’d never heard of Lily Allen. But then my Twitter feed exploded with criticisms of her new video for a song called “Hard Out Here.” So last night (while battling insomnia), I watched it and it was boringly predictable. It wasn’t shocking or provocative. Dating back to slavery, black women’s bodies and sexuality have been expropriated for white profit and pleasure. This isn’t new.

When I was in high school, I picked up a book called “We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century” at my local library. It was the first time (but not the last) that I would come across a daguerrotype of an enslaved girl named Delia.

This photograph, which is thought to perhaps be the earliest made of an adolescent enslaved black girl, has been seared in my mind since I saw it when I was a teenager. Delia was compelled to sit naked for the purpose of having her body examined and documented. The photographs were commissioned by scientist & Harvard professor Louis Agassiz. Agassiz was studying the bodies of blacks to prove that we were a separate and inferior species. Delia’s body was not her own but public property.

I used to be fascinated with Delia’s photograph. I made a copy of it and pasted it in my journal. I think that I was 15 or 16 years old at the time. Her eyes reminded me of my cousin’s. I focused on her eyes. I was embarrassed by her nakedness. I didn’t know why. I didn’t have the words to convey the horrors of slavery. As I grew older, I realized that no one in this country does either. Therefore, it is difficult to represent or understand that which is unspeakable.

listen,
woman,
you not a noplace
anonymous
girl;
— Lucille Clifton

Watching Allen’s video reminded me that black women’s bodies have always been sites of both domination and resistance. The entire script of American chattel slavery was written on black women’s bodies. Control of our bodies was key to both the economic prosperity of slaveowners and to the subjugation of the entire black race. Adrienne Davis (2009) suggests that: “Enslaved black women gave birth to white wealth (p.229)” White people have been fighting to maintain their mastery over our bodies ever since. Black women have continued to resist this and to write our own body stories. And it’s been and is a mighty struggle (see the consistent policing of black girl dancing, for example).

To Lily Allen, consciously or subconsciously, black women are Delias. We are meant to be put on display, to be used as props for others’ pleasure & profit. We are just flesh & property. In the tradition of Agassiz, our anatomy is meant to be examined and prodded. The verdict is out as to whether we should still be considered an inferior species.

I
am a black woman
tall as a cypress
strong
beyond all definition still
defying place
and time
and circumstance
assailed
impervious
indestructible — Mari Evans

Yesterday, another black woman was on display, this time in front of a white judge in Florida. Her name is Marissa Alexander & she was in court to hear whether she would be granted bond and released until her re-trial. The judge made no decision on bond and set another status hearing for January 15. Marissa will likely spend another Christmas in jail. Sitting in the courtroom, Marissa’s body is inscribed with inherent criminality; already presumed guilty. Her blackness makes her both invisible and hyper-visible. I wondered what Lily Allen would have to say to and about Marissa. Then I thought better of it, what could anyone have to say to a chair? For Allen and her ilk, black women are chairs (inanimate objects) to sit on, to decorate their homes, and to eventually discard for a newer/shinier model. To Lily Allen, black women are Delia.

son
By Jessica Muniz J
From recent issue of Captured Words

When I think of you,
I think of your eyes,
How they are sparkling pools of blue,
That always calm me when I see you.
When I think of you,
I think to myself how much strength you give me,
You are my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,
Just knowing that you are waiting for me
To be home,
Helps me to carry on.
Ever since that day you left,
Loneliness had taken its toll.
You are a very special part of my life,
A life that has had its twists and turns,
I know I have missed out on a lot,
But somehow I know that I will be given another chance,
To prove that I really am a wonderful mom.
When I think of you, Son,
You lift up my spirits.
So many of my smiles depend on you.
You bring me so much happiness,
I hope you will never forget,
Not even for a single day,
How wonderful you are to me.
When I think of you, Julian,
I am sorry that I hurt you,
It’s something I must live with every day.
I never meant to do those things to you.
I want to show you a side of me you do not know.
Julian, my Son, you are my reason for all that I do.

I’ve previously shared information about an upcoming exhibition that I am co-curating with my friends at Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy Program. I even shared the collaborative submission that I created with my friend Sarah & her daughter Cadence.

Well, the exhibition officially opens today at HumanThread Center/Gallery. However, the opening reception is on November 15th and you can RSVP here.

Today, I want to share some of the art that will be featured in Picturing A World Without Prisons specifically the photographs. The show marries photographs submitted by people on the outside with art created by jailed youth. This is why we call it an inside/outside exhibition. We’ve temporarily uploaded the photo submissions that we received along with the artist statements on a Tumblr. Eventually, we plan to create an online exhibit that will bring together the art created on the outside with that which was created by the incarcerated youth. This is in addition to the physical exhibition that will run from November 11 to December 6 at HumanThread.

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I’ve always loved this speech by Dr. Abernathy about Angela Davis and haven’t seen it available on the internet so (since I’m an insomniac) I decided to re-type it and share it here. It is still very relevant today.

“I Bring an Indictment Against the American System”
by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy
February 2, 1971

We meet in defense of Miss Angela Davis; therefore, let us ponder the question first, who is Angela Davis? Let us first recall this young Black woman who was born twenty-seven years ago today in Birmingham, Alabama, where the blood of her people flowed under a reign of official racism and terror.

She lived in a Black community which came to be known as “Dynamite Hill.” As she grew up she learned of fifty bombings against Black people in her native Birmingham, all of them unsolved.

She knew four little Black girls, who were her friends, who were murdered in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in Nineteen Sixty Three, but none of us knows the exact identity of the bombers today, because there were no arrests and the FBI did not possess the ability and the skills to find those bombers.

In the face of death every day of her life, Angela Davis began to learn the life of struggle — struggle for survival, struggle for her people, struggle for justice.

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19 year old Renisha McBride had a car accident. Her cell phone died. She knocked on strangers’ doors. She needed help. She was shot in the back of the head.

She’s dead.

And I don’t understand why I’m not running around in circles screaming with grief. I heard about Renisha’s killing two days ago. I tweeted a couple of sentences describing the tragedy. I wanted to add that black lives matter but didn’t because it felt hollow.

Another irreplaceable young black life was violently interrupted. And I couldn’t bring myself to feel… anything. I joined the others on social media who shrugged away our shock.

As word about Renisha’s death traveled across the internet yesterday, the whispers got a bit louder but the outrage was still muted; tempered by the fact that she’s a black girl and therefore the most disposable body on the planet.

I’m worried today because I know that some of the young women in my life (goddaughters, nieces, mentees, clients) are going to ask me about Renisha and I won’t have the words to describe what this type of killing is about. I don’t have the language to describe any of this so I’ll rely on Pearl Cleage’s words until I can find my own again:

“It is a dangerous time to be a black woman in America. It’s a time when we are not safe in the streets or at home or at school or at work and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Nobody. Not us. Not our mommas. Not the police. Not the people we elected to look out for our interests. Nobody. We’re just out here. (p.53)”

We’re just out here… That phrase resonates profoundly. We’re just out here unprotected, reviled, and mostly on our own. We’re just out here locked in prisons. We’re just out here getting killed.

I confess to being exhausted. Perhaps I’m not running around in circles screaming with grief because I know that it isn’t nearly enough. Fear of opening up Pandora’s box can be mistaken for apathy or callousness. Letting the emotions penetrate means that I’ll have to engage in some appeal for action. And I just can’t do it. Because I’m tired and as June Jordan has written engaging would mean that:

“As a Black woman/feminist, I must look about me, with trembling, and with shocked anger, at the endless waste, the endless suffocation of my sisters: the bitter sufferings of hundreds of thousands of women who are the sole parents, the mothers of hundreds of thousands of children, the desolation and the futility of women trapped by demeaning, lowest-paying occupations, the unemployed, the bullied, the beaten, the battered, the ridiculed, the slandered, the trivialized, the raped, and the sterilized, the lost millions and multimillions of beautiful, creative, and momentous lives turned to ashes on the pyre of gender identity. I must look about me and, as a Black feminist, I must ask myself: Where is the love? How is my own lifework serving to end these tyrannies, these corrosions of sacred possibility (p.145).”

We know that we should be driving to Detroit to stand with Renisha’s family. We should be there and yet so many of us are hanging by our fingernails right now trying to keep our worlds from splitting open. We shrug away our shock because we are afraid that speaking the truth about the disposability of black girls’ and women’s bodies exacerbates our pain and perhaps ultimately will swallow us whole. Self-preservation and survival dictate then that we shrug away our shock and hold our breaths knowing that the next Renisha is around the corner. And that she may be us.

Update:

Dream Hampton put together a short video about the tragedy:

Update: Great news!!! The House adjourned today without passing the bill. Details are HERE.

“Black members in the Illinois House have used a procedural measure to stop an anti-crime bill aimed at guns on city streets. [Rep. Ken Dunkin] requested he be provided information on the bill’s effect, including its cost and impact on the prison system. The Department of Corrections did not file that information. Zalewski could have asked the House to rule the information inapplicable — but it likely wouldn’t have worked.”

Special thanks to Rep. Duncan and the members of the Black Caucus who have stood firm against this bill!!!

We have not won yet. The bill will be brought back up in December. We need everyone to take the next couple of weeks to KEEP CONTACTING YOUR REPRESENTATIVES in person, by phone, by email, by fax, by any means necessary. Tell them to vote NO on #SB1342.

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