This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful That a Modern-Day Lynching Was Seen As a Crime
Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers being brought to justice is a small victory in a never-ending fight
This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful that three men who decided to hunt and lynch Ahmaud Arbery for the crime of jogging while Black in America can still be found guilty by a mostly White jury of their peers.
(No anti-lynching bill has been passed by Congress into federal law. Thank you, filibuster, White supremacy, and Rand Paul.)
I’m thankful that one of the members of this lynch posse, William “Roddie” Bryan, decided to tape his fellow murderers chasing Arbery in their white pickup truck, blocking his path, and then fatally shooting him with a shotgun. Without this crucial evidence, Arbery would just be another statistic, a chalk outline on the side of a road, whose death would be rationalized and accepted because he would be demonized as a thug with “long dirty toenails.”
I’m thankful that the video was leaked online on May 5, 2020, nearly two-and-half months after the murder, because the world got to know the name and story of a 25-year-old Black man, a former star high school football player, and an avid jogger, who woke up on Feb. 23, 2020 with dreams and hopes, unrealized and…
