Black Kids, White Power and the River of History
On trying not to drown
In August of 1955 Emmett Till, a 14 year-old black child accused of whistling at a white woman was abducted, beaten and killed by white men. An all-white jury voted to acquit the men, essentially sanctioning the murder as a community. In January of 1956 the murderers were said to have been paid $400 to tell the world the story of how they took a black child’s life.
The violent murder of black people at hands of white power wasn’t a new story in 1955. Racial violence was the norm in the era of Jim Crow laws and black children were not immune to the scourge of white supremacy. Today, over sixty years later, the shooting of 15-year old Jordan Edwards by a Texas police officer is not experienced as a new or even shocking incident for Black Americans. We’ve been wading in this river of pain and loss for centuries. Jordan’s name will be added to the song of our communal grief. We grieve simultaneously for losses now and for centuries of black children who drowned in the rising waters of hate. The pattern remains unchanged. Black children are accused, judged and punished by white men legally sanctioned to provide correction “by any means necessary”.
Sometimes the consequence of such interaction is immediate execution; sometimes, as in the case of a series of incidents in the Woodland Hills school district just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the consequence is not immediately life-threatening, but soul-killing nonetheless.
March 2015
In a video recording, police officer Steve Shaulis is seen yanking 15 year-old Amhad Williams from his seat in the school office, placing the teen in a choke-hold then wrestling him to the ground. Kevin Murray, the school principal, emerges from his office to assist the Officer by pinning the the student’s head to the floor while officer Shaulis tasers the student multiple times.
District Attorney, Stephen Zappala, Jr., charged the student with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. The charge of resisting arrest was dropped in light of the video evidence. According to his lawyer, Amhad Williams served probation on the charge of disorderly conduct. No charges were filed for either the Officer or the Principal.
November 2016
Kevin Murray, the Principal who pinned Amhad William’s head to the ground in 2015, threatened to punch a different student, age 14, in the teeth after the student insulted a staff member.
“You call me a b — -, I’m going to f — — punch you in the face,” [the principal] continued. “Man to man, bro. I don’t care if you’re f — — 14 years old or not, I will punch you in your face and, when we go down to court, it’s your word versus mine, and mine wins every time.”
Principal Murray was put on administrative leave, investigated by the District Attorney and then reinstated. The student, having had the presence of mind to record a second abusive conversation for his own protection, was charged with illegal wiretapping.
April 2017
Que’chawn Wade, 15, accused of stealing a phone (later exonerated), is pushed into an office off camera by Officer Shaulis, the same officer who tasered Amhad Williams. Principal Murray can be seen walking down the hall, toward the altercation. While Officer Shaulis eventually returns within view (apparently nursing a wound on his hand), Que’chawn does not. Later, photographs tell the story of what happened off-camera.
Que’chawn faces charges of resisting arrest, simple assault, aggravated assault and making terroristic threats. To date, Officer Shaulis has not been charged.
The Superintendent of the Wooland Hills school district, Alan Johnson, dismissed accusations of a pattern of abuse involving the Principal and the Officer. “In my heart,” he stated in a Pittsburgh Post Gazette interview, “I know they were just the worst possible coincidences that Woodland Hills could have had.”
It is impossible to separate these present-day incidents from the river of history that has, for centuries, sanctioned violence against black children as essential to maintaining order. Seeing only “coincidences” in this situation is a luxury afforded to those who remain in control of the system. Black bodies have been subjected to the violent judgment of white power so consistently that such behavior seems normal. Phil DiLucente, attorney for the Woodland Hills Principal, gives voice to this normalization noting that Mr. Murray “will not tolerate misbehavior.”
Tolerating “misbehavior” is a burden given to the black children in this situation. They’ve been body-slammed, punched and tasered by a police officer whose behavior transformed the school office into a plantation whipping post. They’ve faced charges of their own, only to see their chief overseer, Principal Murray, promoted to the position of head football coach by the administration.
There are now other students at Woodland Hills high school revealing additional stories of abuse. These students have been trying to swim while the centuries-long river of racial hatred threatens to overtake them. The soul-killing impact of legally sanctioned, repeated, racial injustice poisons the soul of the abused, the abuser and the entire community. The remedy for this poison in Woodland Hills requires change at the personnel, political and policy levels. The need for a remedy is urgent, lest this river rise further and overtake us all.
Click here to follow me. We need each other.
For further reading:
