My friend was dismissed from jury duty yesterday.
Why?
I’m not entirely sure.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he wore his dashiki that day?
You wouldn’t think this colorful West African garment would bring about such things.
He talked about it for two days before he wore it.
He thought he’d likely be dismissed if he did. His only hesitation was that someone would think he was concealing something, and mistakenly shoot him.
Wow…
When he came back to work and said they dismissed him from jury duty, people started gathering around him to hear his story. He held up the outfit he wore.
People laughed.
He laughed too.
Although I was only able to eavesdrop, I felt like something was amiss.
I knew it was his intent to stir the pot.
I also knew, he wasn’t surprised that he was dismissed.
The flip side of the coin, I couldn’t get past the circumstances of his dismissal.
It was a few hours later that I was able to talk with him personally.
The first thing I said to him is, “I’m disappointed that your dashiki was the catalyst for you being dismissed from jury duty.”
“Yeah, I thought about that too.” he said.
He told me, “When I walked in, the room went silent.”
He said, “As the judge was asking the prospective jurors questions, he asked if anyone had any affiliation with authority (police).”
He said everyone gave simple answers.
Everything shifted when my friend wearing his dashiki spoke.
He said, “Coming from Mississippi, you have a hard time interacting with anybody, so I’m somewhat of a loner. The police came to our house and arrested my father and I never seen him again. They said he hung himself in jail. Mother gathers us up and ran down to the morgue to identify the body. His forehead and throat was gashed wide open. This happened in 1953. I was four years old. So the last memory I have was the sheriff picking him up and those awful knife or hatchet wounds on his body. So my trust level is low when it comes to the police.”
My friend’s story did something to that group…
His story stirred something in everyone.
I’m sure it’s not the type of conversation the judge and the attorneys were looking for.
He continued, “On the drive home today, I’ll be frightened. I’ve been stopped so many times for no reason. Just being black. I remember when I shaved my head and got an earring, I got harassed almost every day. I had a Cadillac Seville. I sold it because I thought, ‘I’m going to get shot if I keep driving this car.’” “Just last week I got pulled over just a few blocks from home. The police was unnecessarily aggressive. He had his hand on his gun when he asked for my license. When he saw my address he said, “Oh, you’re not far from here… you can go.” (He lives in southwest Minneapolis, an affluent neighborhood). He said, “As he was walking away, I thought about it and leaned out the window,
What if my address was Dupont Ave. N. (a low income neighborhood)?
Why did you pull me over?
‘Oh… you were weaving.’ he stammered.
This happens to me all of the time. Just last year, they pulled me over and searched my car. They took everything out. When they didn’t find no drugs, they was mad. The police asked me how old I was. When I told him, they said, you’re a god damn lier! (He is 67 and doesn’t look it) He balled his fist up like he was going to hit me and his partner grabbed his arm to stop him. It was like he had to get me for something, so he wrote me a ticket for something about lane change. I was so mad about the way he treated me, I went to court to fight it. As they forced me to pay the fine, I mumbled, you can’t beat the system.”
He says, “The same rope that killed my father killed my mother. The day after my father died, she took deadly sick and died shortly after. They took our farm and our animals. This left seven children with no grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins that could help us with anything. At nine years old, I had two jobs; working in cotton fields and serving food in a nursing home. I grew up seeing people hung. On Jackson Row, every day, someone was hangin’. There were no lawyers. They would shoot you dead and hang you after. They didn’t need an excuse. My friend and I were walking next to the cotton fields and my friend didn’t say sir to a white man. He shot him in the leg. The next day, the paper said, ‘Boy shot for not saying sir to a white man.’ We lived under some people’s house. We had no shoes and tore up clothes. On the way to school every day, a white lady would call me over and give me a sandwich. She would only stick her hand out the door. I never saw her face. I think God was teaching me not to hate white people. At fifteen, me and my baby brother hitch hiked north to Chicago, Illinois.”
The stories he told me about that time will sit with me forever.
He is a father of six. His wife is a social worker for Hennepin County. One of their daughters graduated from Harvard with a masters degree. Another, graduated from Berkley. Two of his daughters are professional singers that toured with Prince for two years. Incidentally, their group has been nominated for “Best Urban Contemporary” at the upcoming Grammy Awards on February 12th, along with Beyonce and Rihanna.
He told me when his fellow jurors heard these stories, something happened. He said, “Women were crying. People were telling their stories. I started something there…”
Everyone else spoke up about the oppression they had encountered or witnessed.
He told me, “Tim, you know what really blew my mind? All the women in this group had been raped or sexually molested by someone they knew. This is a real epidemic.”
He said, “One woman told me I’ve heard so many of these stories over the years but they somehow didn’t seem real. To hear it directly from you, that really changes everything. She said she could really see, for the first time, her white privilege. She said her parents had taught her to go to the police if she ever sensed trouble. I told her, ‘I tell my kids, stay away from the police.’
She asked me what can I do?
How can I help?
I told her, ‘tell people my story.
Tell children my story.’”
My friend is a guy that has done it all “right”.
A bootstraps sort of fellow.
A Christian man.
A business man.
A family man.
A hard working man.
A man in the later years of his life.
Yet his reality is distinctly different than mine.
He tells me, “Every day I drive home, I’m frightened that tonight will be the night I’ll be shot by the police. I can’t imagine what it is like to not be fearful.”
This is his reality…
I think he was dismissed from jury duty because his voice is too powerful.
I think the dashiki had little to do with it.
Other than stirring in him, a boldness to tell his story.
To tell his truth.
Shine on, brother!
Shine on!
