“Self Portrait” by Copyright © 2015 Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.
Leslye Joy Allen, Copyright © 2016. All Rights Reserved.
Today is my play big brother Walter Dallas’ birthday. A brilliant director, playwright and composer, I was so glad to talk with him this morning. Today it has also been reported that Sandra Bland’s family has reached a settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit they filed against Texas police officers (Read: Sandra Bland’s Family Reaches $1.9 Million Dollar Settlement). I can only say that her family fought valiantly for changes to be made at the jail where Sandra Bland died. Her family might have gotten a bigger settlement if Black women’s lives mattered half as much as the lip service we often hear that says that we actually matter. Talk is cheap.
Today is also the 53rd anniversary of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that snuffed out the lives of four young black girls named Cynthia Morris (later called Cynthia Wesley), Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, and Addie Mae Collins. Addie Mae’s sister Sarah Collins Rudolph survived the blast, but lost an eye and her sister. Two black boys were killed the same day near the church in additional acts of racial violence; they were Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware. So how does one celebrate the birthday of a wonderful director, playwright, composer and all-around great guy while remembering the deaths of our children, and of those who died needlessly in police custody and much too soon?
On the surface no visible correlation exists between any of these events. Yet, a birthday is often a milestone to look back at what one has accomplished and what one wants to accomplish in the years ahead. These deaths, however, are painful reminders of the work still ahead of us, a reminder to pause and appreciate those among the living for who they are and what they do because no day is promised to any of us.
It is for me also a reminder of all those butterflies, the white and yellow clouded sulfur butterflies, and the orange and black monarch butterflies, that have followed me for the last two weeks, in my yard, in the street, and in parking lots that remind me of renewal and transformation, and that those who live with us for a long time and those who leave us too soon will return again. Àṣé!”
Leslye Joy Allen, Copyright © 2016. All Rights Reserved.
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