If we go back to February 2020; How did you first learn what had happened to Ahmaud?
Um
Oh is this a difficult question?
Is it a difficult question? I mean I can imagine that it is but...
Um
Yeah. Okay.
The death of Ahmaud Arbery last year sparked protests across the United States
Arbery 's family says he was out for a jog February 23rd. But sixty-four-year-old Gregory
McMichaels and his son, Travis, told police Arbery was a burglar and chased him. Arbery died after
being shot during that encounter. Ahmaud's former football coach and other community members
believe that social justice for Ahmaud, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others begins with lawmakers
Have y'all heard about the Confederate monument downtown? No? Not the history teacher Coach!
Coach can you give them a quick few seconds on this monument downtown which is a problem?
Our city you know that's already hurting you know we're trying to come together so we want
to get rid of all of those like symbols of like division that i said you see what i'm saying? So
your kids and you know your grandkids don't have to look at it when they go downtown. We good?
I got 112 football players I got to look in the eye. And I got to hand over them a better
community than I found. And so like even when I see them or when I see my students
I know I got to create better for them. And I teach African-American Studies.
And so I'm telling the stories of the past and I'm thinking like I don't want you going through that
Like so, like kids grow up in different type of households so like this they just raised
a certain way from like different from us so they like they walk around with
Confederate flags and they'll say it's a different meaning than what we think it is.
So the Sons of the Confederate Veterans came down and wrapped it up because
of the attention that has been drawn nationally so they came down and and bubble wrapped it
Like, in school, you got different like you got different people opinions -
and like you got so much animosity going on now you might might have a big fight break out
you don't want that on the school name. So I see why they don't want to talk about it in school.
Yeah yeah I'll go ahead and start. I'll just hit some of the houses that I know
uh myself. Did y'all talk to him? Hey! How's it going?
All right now.
You good?
Everybody doing, y'all doing all right?
Good how you been?
All right.
Good, you uh you plan on voting?
Yeah.
Okay!
Did you watch the video?
Oh yes ma'am, I watched the video last year. Cuz they had - when it came out
it was all over the place. So they were just sharing and sharing and sharing and sharing it so
there's like no way you can hide it from nobody. The whole world seen it now.
Millions have seen the disturbing video. Twenty-five-year-old Ahmaud Arbery
shot and killed as he's jogging in rural Georgia.
Remember when you watched the video? I never watched
it. I haven't seen it. I've heard about it, but no I have not seen the video.
Really, why?
Um I really don't want to see it.
You know, it was a terrible situation and I just didn't want to see it.
Do you see it as a like a racial incident?
What I knew about Greg and his son I don't, I can't see that.
You know they never indicated anything to me where they were
or they were like that at all. You know they just never did. I was very surprised when I saw
them being the ones out here because I wouldn't have thought that. You know, like I said,
I was very surprised it happened here. After all these people are all really nice that I've met.
So one of the things that we heard resounding across the community when the video came
out was "How did this happen here?" You know, "We're unified," You know, "We don't have those issues here,"
so I think you have to talk about Glenn County in the context of Brunswick. Brunswick is the
largest city in the county it's also the darkest city, and when I say darkest I mean 60 percent black. It's
also the city that has the highest poverty rate. One of the highest poverty rates in the nation.
Um and then you sit within this county that has this opulence surrounding
it, right? Saint Simons Island, Jekyll Island; you move to the counties 30 percent black at that point.
So you really have a tale of two cities that are separated by a bridge literally.
You have a high rate of poverty - disproportionate for black folk.
You have low rates of home ownership - disproportionate for black folks.
A large amount of folks on probation and parole - primarily black folk. You have people
in political office that run unopposed and only 600 people voted out of 8,000 registered voters. So
if one would consider that unified then that means that that's because everyone else has been silent.
Just being you know a history teacher and you know I teach African-American Studies.
These tragedies happen so much. They happen so much in our country, that
I don't know maybe this is not even a bookmark in history.
And that is and that would be one of the most tragic things in the world that something you
know this tragedy happened and we don't learn from it, we don't grow from it, we don't change from it.
In African tradition there was something called, or someone called, the griot. And the griot was
responsible for telling the narrative of the history of the family or the tribe.
That person had to remember all of this, right? We don't have a griot in the United
States of America who can tell the accurate story, right? And people like the McMichaels
can choose to live their lives and never hear the story. The full story. And the result
is the death of an innocent black boy. A young man, a young black man. Who died for no reason.
I'll say at the outset: everybody deserves to be able to run anywhere without being fearful
that they're going to be gunned down. But when it was Ahmaud Arbery that was gunned down and I knew
who he was - it outraged me. Because he is the descendant of a prince. He is the akin
to royalty and he is the closest thing we have to royalty here, his family.
He came, you know he was the descendant of Bilali Muhammad, who's been here since the 1790s. He was a
royalty among the slaves, partly because he could read, he could write, he brought the Arabic language
you know, onto American shores. He was a brilliant agronomist, you know? And he brought the
materials and the tricks of the trade from west Africa and they worked on the Georgia coast. And I
think he was just highly regarded among his people. A man who stood above all the others. People are
always talking about the founding fathers of this country, right? The founding builders of this place
were Ahmaud's family.
His family is tied to Brunswick, Georgia itself. Brunswick is the
second-largest Gullah Geechee city in all of Georgia. And so these African Gullah Geechee people
they play a role with regards to laying out the streets and the squares in the place we
know as Brunswick, Georgia. A planned city, much like Savannah. So that tells you that these
people had skills, they had skill sets, not just regulated to just them working on a plantation
but people who were still keeping Africa alive.
People were brought here - forced here
immorally. But they were chosen particularly because of their brains and their knowledge
of rice culture and indigo culture - something that European people had no real knowledge of.
And they dug the canals, and built this place.
Now I, you know, I will tell you the McMichaels and Roddy Bryant's families go way
way back in Georgia history. As you saw, some of my students research showed that you know
the McMichael's ancestors fought for the Confederacy. Some owned slaves,
and they go back a long ways. And so they may feel they have a right to be there. Well so did
Ahmaud Arbery.
So we have a collision of two worlds, of two historic worlds and it's really important
if you get the word historic in there because uh neither of those entities that met each other
met in a vacuum of the here and the now. They both brought with them their respective histories.
And unfortunately, in the United States of America, the more powerful history
is the one that came on the backs of the McMichaels.
I realize history is gonna - has seized us here. I realize that. History gonna be here and
reading history books 10 years from now, it will be about this place.
Things that happen, it always depends on what you do with it once it happens to you.
You know, are you going to lay down and just die or you're going to get up and do something about it?
I think people will look back and say that this sparked and created a change.
Where America looked at a very real problem and prompted change and so they got rid of the Citizen
Arrest Law, they got rid of Stand Your Ground laws around the country - It is what sparked
a change and that's what I hope that it does, I hope that it sparks a change around the country
and when they look at Brunswick they can say that, look you know if Brunswick can unite and come
together; this small town where people don't have a lot in common depending on what street you live on,
if they can come together and create a change our country can come together and create a change.