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50 Days Later: Still Grieving, Called, Woke
On the 49th day of being in prayerful solidarity with Sandra Bland, I sat in the corner of a coffee shop at the close of one more day in front of the Waller County Jail. I fielded phone calls and messages about an angry video released by a white supremacist. Concern for our safety was not a…
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How Sandra Bland Changed My Life
On August 25, I stood in front of the Prairie View City Council and I said that I was there because Sandra Bland had changed my life. Despite the fact that I never met Sandra Bland, and sadly will never get to meet her, it was true. Assuredly, she had help: her friends and family…
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Sandy Still Speaks
“Mommy why are the police mad? The police pushed me…” the small African American girl said to her mother as she and a handful of other young girls were shuffled into the arms of a waiting grandmother. Looking down I saw a sight that seared itself into my memory: five pairs of eyes, in five…
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An Open Letter to My Unapologetic Black Sisters
“What did Sandra Bland do wrong?” the reporter from Memphis asked as we arrived at the Waller County jail on Day 11 of what is now 21 days. “She was black,” my friend Andrea Sawyer-Gray, Curator of (Her)story, replied without skipping a beat. In the undertone were the echoes of another truth: she was black…
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Sandra Bland: Fighting For Life, Both Hers & Yours
“Isn’t that what you are here for?!?” the white, female ABC reporter in front of us raged. She had watched from her SUV as those of us keeping vigil for Sandy Bland outside of Waller County Jail watched the video of Sandy’s arrest for the first time, huddled around one of our smart phones. It…
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What Happened to Sandra Bland?
From July 15 – Sitting Vigil for Sandra Bland – Arrested for failing to signal a lane change and found dead in her cell “Blow that out,” the voice came loud and stern over the loud speakers of the Waller County Sheriff’s Office and County Jail. Moments earlier, we had lit a votive candle on…
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Silence
Silence. That is what lay between my aunt and I for years after I answered the call to ministry. I knew that it was because the idea had been planted in her mind that I condemned her, because she was a lesbian and I was a pastor in the United Methodist Church. The distance hurt…
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My Feet Are Planted
“Don’t you think there is another side of the story,” was his opening line, as I pondered the stranger in front of me with puzzlement. My mind scrambled. What story? What other side? “What do you mean?” I queried, studying the white collar, Caucasian man, a couple decades my elder. “Well don’t you think there’s…
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Duke: Cutting Down Nets and Nooses
“Maybe now they’ll stop hanging nooses off trees on campus…” I read the words just moments after I had added my own throwback photo to the avalanche flooding newsfeeds with Duke alumni’s exuberance over their NCAA win. In the midst of celebrating Coach K cutting down the net as a symbol of Duke basketball’s dominance, the irony was not…
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Ravens
“Hey, you up?” There’s only one thing that could mean, I think to myself, pulling on my robe: JJ brought me food. She has been doing it ever since she moved in a few months back. Working long hours, and then picking up something to eat on the way home, and bringing something for me…
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Hannah Adair Bonner 