Revolution

“Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman…
The Invisible Man and Hercules don't scare me
The FBI, Anti-American Committee, J. Edgar Hoover, President Nixon,
President Johnson, Martha Mitchell,
And her husband or her man or her woman…
Ethel Kennedy, all the Kennedys
Bank of America, Chase Manhattan, Rockefeller…
None of these people scare me.
What scares me is that one day my son will ask me
‘What did you do Daddy when the shit was goin' down”
-Richard Pryor

I nodded my head to the rhythm of Blu and Exile’s “Greater Love” attempting to distract myself from the traffic I had been sitting in for the last half hour. Atlanta is known for its traffic, but seldom does it spill over into the surface streets downtown to cause a standstill of this magnitude. As the baseline faded away and gave way to an outro voiced by the late Richard Pryor over a faint jazz loop, there was a heaviness in the warm July air that night. Instead of the typical club patrons and bar hoppers, the streets were still and there was the faint echo of chanting growing ever louder and closer. I had spent the last several days documenting protests in the aftermath of the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police but tonight I felt so emotionally drained that I just wanted to go home and hold my daughter. The universe had other plans, though. I see it as no accident that despite having my music shuffled, that particular song would play as a wave of protesters seemed to engulf all of the vehicles around me. Instinctually, I pulled my car to the side, grabbed my camera from the passenger seat, and joined the large crowd. I felt that it was a part of my purpose to continue telling this story in that moment and despite my emotional fatigue, I hoped that maybe one of my photos would touch someone so that my daughter would never have to feel the pain and fear that I had experienced. Just a few years prior to this night, I quit my job teaching photography and printing after my class of all white students berated me for cancelling class to document protests after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered by a white so-called vigilante. Two years later, I found myself documenting the same after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by police. Again and again, I found myself photographing my people in tears because they had lost loved ones to police violence and misconduct. We were furious that this has continued for centuries simply because of our skin color. these were hate-crimes; Modern day lynchings. Seeing bodies of our sons, father, sisters, mothers and friends lying in pools of blood has become so commonplace that protests had become almost just another Sunday stroll. Even I, at 18, had been attacked, beaten to blood, repeatedly called a nigger, thrown into a police car while they did donuts in an empty parking lot slamming my head against the glass as they rapidly changed directions while reading off how many years I would spend in prison for whatever charges they could creatively pin on me. They then tossed into a cell with at least a dozen other people who looked just like me while guards threw bleach at us. I still remember the smell and how my eyes burned along with every open cut and gash on my skin. All this for being Black in the wrong place at the wrong time. The charges against me were immediately dropped the next day and I was told to go home as if nothing had happened. I never reported it because it was just another part of growing up Black in America. I was just glad to be alive; even more now that the list of names of my brothers and sisters who are no longer with us keeps growing; over and over, year after year, protest after protest. Then, in May of 2020, something changed here in Atlanta. The world had just watched officers murder another Black Man in the street. His name was George Floyd. Again, we took to the streets to ask that we as Black People simply be treated with respect and dignity as human beings just as we had done repeatedly for centuries. We marched across town, up and down congested streets toward the CNN Center; right into a standoff with SWAT officers. The officers were largely calm as protesters verbally released ages of pain and rage at who we all agreed protected and perpetuated white supremacy. Then the calm was shattered as a large white officer slammed a small teenage girl on her head in the middle of the crowd. Someone had thrown an empty plastic bottle from deep in the crowd that hit the officer and she happened to be the closest person to him. She incurred his wrath. I was standing right next to her and watched the spiral of events unfold as a swarm of officers tackled me and others out of the way. My heart broke watching people rush to overwhelm the officer to save the girl from becoming another name on that list. We were pepper sprayed, thrown, tackled, and beaten. I continued to photograph as we, as a people, had had enough. Asking to be seen and heard was no longer on the table. In those moments, we demanded our humanity. With every shutter click, I wanted everyone to see and feel the energy that this system of white supremacy and violence had created. I needed the world to see what my parents, grandparents, and theirs before them experienced and fought against. We spent years asking for the right to live and to be treated as humans. We were told “no” and in response to our demand for humanity, soldiers were sent to patrol our streets and playgrounds because we were now perceived as a threat to those who wanted to justify this cycle of killing us. This country- OUR country and it’s police seem to have a problem with the idea of simply not murdering black men, women, and children in cold blood. I do not know that this body of work will ever be complete as the struggle for equality continues day in and out for my people. I do hope though, that my work, along with the photographs of others will continue to shed light on this centuries old fight to be seen and treated as human beings. My daughter- our children deserve to live full lives without the threat of police and white vigilante violence. I refuse to continue to ask for my humanity. I am a Black Man, and this is our Revolution.