Your dedicated life's work was just that, dedicated. Its beginning was not off to a pleasant nor welcoming start in meeting those on death row. I am sure it can seem at times the vehicle of the Equal Justice Initiative can not seem to move as fast as it needs to turn this ship of mass incarceration and wrongful conviction around in this nation. What is extraordinary is that its ugliness did not deter you upon really seeing Alabama. It did not make you run for the hills as you yourself are a black man, and this was surely no place for one. You had a bright future promised with your Harvard degree and you could have gone ANYWHERE else. Anywhere. Yet you did not.
You were set on helping these men who had been denied proper representation and men who were convicted having no evidence having committed the crime. So you were off to work on these cases, the first being Walter McMillian's; a man who had accused of murdering an eighteen-year-old white girl on the account of a white man that he himself had not known. You told him that you would work to have him removed from death row, a promise that was dangerous to make. A declaration that was dangerous for the community of Monroeville to gain wind of. What made you feel so confident? Was this sheer will speaking? There was no example of this being done either. There was no trailblazer, no pioneer. This is the difference between a regular man and an exceptional man.
I wonder what our progress as black people would look like in this nation had we more individuals who could see the possible in the impossible, If I could see the possible in the impossible. If we believed in the power we hold individually to spark momentum, to spark conversation. If we had worked in an effort every day as you have for the past 35 years to eradicate the problems all stemming from systemic racism, this beast of an egregore that is a well-oiled machine kicked in full gear.
Nothing is more frustrating than knowing that there are collectives of people living life obliviously whilst all of this chaos, that is our peoples' every day of life, is commencing. Nothing is more uncomfortable than the welled up cry in our throats from the fear that if we speak no one will understand or hold a conversation. At eight years old, I did not understand what it meant that my mother was in jail. I did understand, though, that it was not a conversation to be had with the people around me. Not even a conversation to be addressed in my own family and that it had been wrongful. That just because it was ordered by the judge in Phenix City Alabama that it did not mean that he was right. I knew my mom was innocent and not deserving of her felony, however, the outside world would never see that because it could not see the machine operating with its mission to eradicate the black kind monopolizing our entire nation.
Your choice to expand your reach in telling your story in accordance with these men's robbed lives has worked to peel off cataracts over people's eyes. The choice to turn your story into a film Just Mercy has allowed insight into what the wrongfully convicted and their families go through. Such work has reduced the swelling in our throats from not being to articulate our experiences. It has allowed room for understanding to be swept across all demographics and invite awareness. The repercussions brought upon our families by the police and courts have long been ignored and misunderstood.
The magic and healing your work has brought not just in the form of exoneration but in our households, communities, and confrontation with our government has rooted importance within me to be of service. Not to just be of service but to consciously use my abilities to change lives around me and continue reform. Just maybe I could change a little Kayla's life from being like mine.
This will not just be a fire with a timer on it but a lifelong mission.
Sincerely,
Kayla Mary Jane
Comments