Mae Mallory is buried in an unmarked grave in the Frederick Douglass Memorial Park on Staten Island.

She died in 2007. She was 80.

If you are a black person living in the U.S. and don’t know who Mallory is, that’s deeply unfortunate because you stand in part on her shoulders. She spent a lifetime fighting against racial injustice. She divorced in the early 1950s when this was frowned upon. She was a single mother before it was acceptable to be one. She spoke loudly and believed in carrying a big stick. She was radical and unapologetic. She was unjustly jailed and made a big fuss about it.

She is buried in an unmarked grave on Staten Island. Her contemporaries like Robert F. Williams, Julian Mayfield, Huey Newton, Malcolm X have markers on theirs. Mallory hasn’t yet found her Alice Walker who will reclaim the ground where she is buried and remind all of us of her invaluable contributions. After being falsely accused of molesting young boys and savaged by the Black press, Zora Neale Hurston escaped to Florida where she lived a quiet, destitute life until her death. She too was buried in an unmarked grave until Alice Walker revived her legacy. There is something about being a black woman in the U.S. that seems to demand invisibility and also burials in unmarked graves.

I have written about Rekia Boyd as I try to hold myself accountable for minimizing the state violence against black girls and women. Perhaps I want to forget about the violence because I am black and a woman and a survivor of violence. I want to close my eyes to stories like that of 17 year old Kwamesha Sharp who was thrown to the ground by a police officer and then miscarried. If the baby was a girl, I hope that her grave is marked.

Ms. Sharp is suing the officer.

There are no campaigns calling for “justice” for Kwamesha. And you know what? I can’t be critical about this because of the thousands upon thousands of injustices that people of color experience in a year, a month, a week, a day. Who can keep up with all of the instances of violence and abuse and oppression? The answer is simple: no one can. It is going to take a massive and long-term social movement to uproot state violence.

In the meantime, I hope that Rekia Boyd’s grave has a marker on it…