Photo caption: A BOY AND A GIRL stand in front of a makeshift memorial near where Tanaja Stokes, 8, was fatally shot and her 7-year-old cousin was shot in the head while they were jumping rope on August 10, 2010, at
their neighborhood in the far south.
Part two of two
I suspect that it is not racial lines that divide us internally, but class lines. That the combination of race, class, and gender allows many of us to see this as a “them” versus “us” issue, evoking Zora Neale Hurston’s description of black women as the “world mule” .
They’re not mules. They are our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, wives, lovers, daughters. Rich or poor. Greek or non-Greek. Suburb or city. And they are at the center of a mostly silent crisis in America. Yet we remain silent – at least until the problem suddenly seems to touch us, encroach on our territory and creep up to our door. A friend recently put it this way, quoting her dear late grandmother: “No one cares about falling leaves until one falls in their yard.” »
I suspect that’s why we care so much about Carlee Russell, who was allegedly kidnapped after going to the aid of a young child she spotted on an Alabama highway, when her story broke this summer. His case pushed all the right buttons: middle class; a sorority girl versus a “local girl”; a nursing student from suburban Hoover, Alabama, where the average household income is $122,886, plus the “sensational” circumstances surrounding her disappearance (Thursday, July 13). Carlee’s story resonated in black communities across the country and at the same time brought national attention to the lack of media coverage of cases of missing and murdered black women.
L. Pfleger, pictured here during one of his annual “Peace Walks”
in summer 2021, leads the way in Chicago by attracting attention…
both locally and nationally – to the issue of violence.
Carlee’s story was proven to be a lie when she returned home 49 hours after her disappearance, later confessing to police that she had faked her kidnapping and that her entire story had been fabricated. Temporary media attention to the cases of missing and murdered black women quickly faded. And yet, the truth about countless Black women and girls remains.
The truth is that from 2019 to 2021 alone, 5,240 Black women and girls have been killed. Their 2,078 recorded homicides in 2021 represented a nearly 54% increase since 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The truth?
Homicides of black women outpaced the number of homicides nationwide, which increased by a comparative 36 percent. Black women experience nearly three times the rate of homicide than white women. Firearms were used in 53.9 percent of female homicides, although at a higher rate in black female homicides, at 57.7 percent.
The truth is that even though homicides among all people in the United States increased by 30% in 2020, the rate for black women exceeded that figure, reaching 33%, even though they only make up about 7 .3% of the American population.
The truth? “According to the National Crime Information Center, missing Black women and men in 2022 accounted for 35% of the total 546,568 missing persons cases, while Black people make up only 13.6% of the U.S. population. Of those 35 percent, 97,924, or more than 50 percent, were black women; 95,194 were black men; and there were 33 missing black people whose gender was unknown,” journalist Samantha Latson recently reported.
All these numbers and more are detailed in a powerful three-part investigative series by Latson, herself an African-American. Titled “Ringing the Alarm: The Case of Missing and Murdered Black and Brown Women,” it was recently published. Not in the New York Times or the Washington Postor even in one or other of the daily newspapers of the big cities of his hometown – although, in my opinion, that is enough – but in the Chicago Crusader, a historic black newspaper more than 80 years old. And yet, I have to wonder why this story isn’t on the front page or homepage1 of the websites of every black news organization in America.
This glaring absence in no way diminishes the value of Latson’s work nor the of the crusader commitment. This in no way diminishes his first-rate reporting, his powerful writing, or his sensitive and dedicated approach to the subject at hand. His story is rarely recognized or covered by the mainstream press. One that, historically, has been ignored. This is a story – I am convinced as a journalist with almost 40 years of experience – for which the American mainstream media has neither appetite nor interest, although it is one of the most important and consequential human problems of our time.
Indeed, Latson’s series is an extension of her work as an undergraduate at Roosevelt University, where, while one of my students, she was a reporter and editor for the Unforgotten Project 51 of the 51 women murdered in Chicago. “Sounding The Alarm,” which she produced independently as part of her graduate project at Indiana University, where she recently earned her master’s degree, elevates her previous work by examining this question national scale empirically and anecdotally. His effort seeks to humanize the loss inherent in numbers in a way that calls readers to empathy while educating them and showing us all why we should care.
I can’t think of a better vehicle than the Black press to publish an urgent and critical series like this, written by a Black journalist. The one who, in the spirit, audacity, journalistic talent and passion of Ida B. Wells, is sounding the alarm.
I just wonder why we don’t all sound the alarm. Why it seems like black lives don’t matter to black people. And yet, it is not too late.
“Until black lives matter to all of us”
Sound the alarm. Let it start with the church. Let the Church call women in mourning. And until Black lives matter – for us and for others, regardless of color or class – let us pray. Pray that this city and our nation will find its lost soul. Pray for healing in black and brown neighborhoods.
Pray that we stop being cold-blooded. Our bloodied cities are now flooded with rain of steel. With the pain of mothers. With rivers of murder and endless names, lives and souls claimed.
Pray. For divine intervention in the midst of impotent good intentions on the part of the powers that be. Amidst the laxity of the Church. Amid the abandonment of morality by too many in our community.
Pray against family disintegration. Against the infestation of depravity that has eaten away at the fabric of our cities like cancer. Pray. For revenge, retaliation or federal troops are not the solution.
Pray for solution, for resolution, for unwavering will. Pray for peace and confiscate this chaos. Pray for light to engulf this darkness that fills the hearts and minds of too many young black men with the insatiable desire to kill and kill again. Pray that those responsible for the murder and kidnapping of our women and girls from this world will be exposed and brought to justice. Pray.
raising alarm over missing and murdered black women and girls.
For righteousness exalts a nation, not sin, hatred, or murder.
Pray for God to transform the hearts of men. However grandiose the project to repair our sick and soulless cities, let it begin with prayer.
With the faithful fervent prayers uttered by our ancestors whose spirits still yearn for peace, liberty and the posterity of the black people. Prayers that allowed us to escape slavery to build large institutions, even churches with large bell towers.
Prayers that saved us from the cruel hands of slave masters. Prayers that guided us as we walked through the valley of the shadow of death, through the land of American lynchings. Across the desert sands of Jim Crow’s hate-filled plane. The prayers that helped Martin, Malcolm, Medgar and John Lewis get back on their feet.
Pray. like we did before – before complacency set in. Before we start imitating the oppressor’s plan. Before the shine of materialism stole our spiritual affections like a grand ploy that left us wandering through this Promised Land.
May we pray. And may we sound the alarm. Until black lives matter to all of us.
E-mail: (email protected)
#JusticeDayforJelani
The truth is, I don’t expect white America to necessarily care. But what about black America?
E-mail: (email protected)
#JusticeDayforJelani
Fountain John W.
John W. Fountain is a professor of journalism at Roosevelt University and a 2021-2022 U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Ghana, where he is a visiting lecturer at the University of Ghana-Legon and is conducting research on his project titled “Hear Africa Calling : Portraits of Blacks. Americans attracted to the homeland.
