One of my favorite quotes is by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He once wrote life can only be lived forwards but understood looking backwards. Kierkegaard further postulated life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Several years ago, riding down Georgia 400 about ten thirty at night on my way home from a class my cell rang. It was my dad calling to tell me my brother had been shot in the heart and killed. That moment was a problem we cannot solve here on earth, and it was a reality I would rather not have experienced.
I thought the worst had happened when my cousin was shot that Saturday. Little did I know what new horrors Monday would bring. My brother was nineteen years old. I am the child of two solidly middle-class families. I thought we should be immune to our modern Black plague. Who do I think I am. This Black Death makes no distinctions amongst age groups and social classes.
But if life is lived forwards, I am determined to look backwards and understand why this virus has overtaken America’s Black community. Anyway, gentle reader, here we go.
At 10:30 in the morning on February 14, 1929, in a garage located at 2122 North Clark Street Chicago, Illinois seven men were gunned down in the most infamous gangland hit in American history. The picture at the top of this page was taken in the shooting’s aftermath. Known as The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre this was the winning salvo in a gang war fought during the roaring twenties between factions led by Al Capone and George “Bugs” Moran. Irish, Jewish, and Italian gangsters were fighting a turf war over the illegal liquor trade in the city of big shoulders during Prohibition. Although it is suspected by many a sort of special forces unit employed by Capone called the Americans (so called because they were not Italian) carried out this atrocity the majority of the combatants came from assimilating communities struggling to eke out an existence on our country’s assimilating margins.
In 2023 America’s killing fields are filled with Black bodies. Funny I hear Black Lives Matter. You could have fooled me. My brother was nineteen when he was killed. That would make him a senior citizen by today’s standards.
A young Vietnamese woman was in my class when he was killed. I told her about his murder, and she told me how sorry she was. She then told me about her cousin who was a police officer in South Fulton County until he quit out of fear of the violence he saw committed on his beat on the regular. This is a man who grew up in the shadows of an actual war zone, yet he feared for his life working a beat in America’s killing fields. What would he think now?
Last week a fourteen-year-old girl and a fifteen-year-old boy were gunned down at a sweet sixteen party in Atlanta’s suburbs. They were a part of an ongoing genocide in Metro Atlanta. I saw some wag in an online message board crack Atlanta is the Black Mecca all right, the mecca of crime. An eight-year-old girl was gunned down a couple of years ago because her mother tried to go around a group of thugs guarding a street they didn’t own from who knows what. Maybe they thought she was an undercover police officer.
A twelve-year-old boy was gunned down a few weeks ago outside Atlantic Station, a so-called nice spot. A nice spot to die, I guess. A fourteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old boy got into a social media beef and forgot or never knew you are at a disadvantage when you cede the high ground. They rolled into an apartment complex parking lot and were gunned down by people shooting from an upstairs window. Need I say they were Black. But Black Lives Matter.
I’m sure Al Capone would be proud.
I could go on and on, but those of us who live in Atlanta know murders are a daily occurrence. And it’s not just here. Although this does feel like the mecca of crime whenever you turn on the news. And if you have sons and/or daughters you fear the Black Death, knowing it can strike anywhere at any time.
I’m tired of slogans. I want Black lives to matter- to Black people. Take a good look at the photo. This is what the aftermath of bodies being sprayed with Thompson Submachine gun fire followed up with a couple of blasts to the head by a trusty shotgun to ensure the job was done right look like. Ah, the sensual pleasure of gun violence.
Black lives should matter. But they don’t. Not to far too many Black people. I think about that every Valentine’s Day. As the massacre in our streets continues.
I’ll delve into reasons for this genocide in two weeks. Today I needed to get this off my chest. This story about a Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. One I take personal. Like the relatives of the men on the floor in that garage in 1929.
It could have been worse. The killers let a German Shepard live. Probably figured he wouldn’t talk. Or maybe they thought Shepard lives matter and practiced what they preached.
This is the reality my community experiences more than any other. Next time I continue to look backwards.
People offer a thousand reasons for the causes of black crime. The end result is carnage!
Clearly Black Lives Matter don’t matter much to under class