Member-only story
A Young Marley Fights for her Grandfather’s Dream of Afro-Solidarity
Bob Marley was never able to forge true brotherhood with Black Americans. Decades later, his granddaughter’s generation is fighting to change that.
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
On May 31, shortly after the explosive beginnings of global unrest following the police murder of George Floyd, 24-year-old Zuri Marley uploaded a video to Instagram. In the clip, her grandfather, Bob Marley, is 28 years old. His iconic dreadlocks are only down to his shoulders as he sings the first lines of a song from the 1973 album Burnin’: “This morning I woke up in a curfew/O God, I was a prisoner, too — yeah!/Could not recognize the faces standing over me/They were all dressed in uniforms of brutality.”
As a 25-year-old, queer Jamaican American navigating my feelings about my own city facing curfew in reaction to the protests, the clip and the timeliness of the lyrics struck me. It took me back to driving home with my mother in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was 12 years old. A trembling black woman approached my mother’s car, begging for a ride to get away from her abusive partner. I turned to my mother, expecting that she…
