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It Matters That Tyre’s Accused Killers Were Black

Tyre Nichols

Tyre Nichols

By  John W.  Fountain

The fact that the cops were Black makes it worse. A young Black man lynched by Black men in Blue, and propped up on the side of an unmarked Memphis police car like new “strange fruit.” I absorb the horror of it all, and my soul cries.

That these Black men now charged with the murder of Tyre Nichols—sworn to serve and protect—could beat to death any man, let alone one who looked like them, like me, like their “sons,” brothers or nephews, pricks my soul with profound pain.

His kinky woolen hair, like theirs. His deep chocolate complexion, like theirs. And Tyre Nichols’ lifelong burden of being Black and male in America—imposed by a society in which we remain America’s most loved and also her most hated—is also their burden to carry unto death.

And the unconscionable truth is: They would not have beaten a white young man that way. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, let alone Tyre—the mirror reflection of themselves.

And yet, with their hands—and feet—the police’s own video recordings show that officers viciously beat the life out of him without mercy in incomprehensible horror, the likes of which all of America and the world witnessed inflicted upon Rodney King, 25, in March 1991 by Los Angeles Police.

The nation also witnessed on video, 23 years later, the slaying of Eric Garner, 43, choked to death in July 2014, by New York police after approaching him for selling loose squares. Then came the unjust fatal shootings by police of Philando Castile, 32 (killed July 2016), Alton Sterling, 37 (killed July 2016) and countless other Black men whose stories have not yet—and may never—come to light, like many before them, buried by false reports, a blue wall of silence and the absence of videotape.

LAQUAN MCDONALD, 17, WAS fatally wounded in October 2014, by a since convicted, but now free, white Chicago police officer Jayson Van Dyke who emptied his Smith and Wesson 9mm semi-automatic pistol into Laquan’s body, shooting him 16 times, as indicated in the diagram showing the entrance and exit wounds.
LAQUAN MCDONALD, 17, WAS fatally wounded in October 2014, by a since convicted, but now free, white Chicago police officer Jayson Van Dyke who emptied his Smith and Wesson 9mm semi-automatic pistol into Laquan’s body, shooting him 16 times, as indicated in the diagram showing the entrance and exit wounds.

Like the inhumanity inflicted against Laquan McDonald in October 2014, by a since convicted, but now free, white Chicago cop who emptied his Smith and Wesson 9mm semi-automatic pistol into the 17-year-old’s body, shooting him 16 times as his body jerked and smoldered on an autumn night.

Like the terrorism against the body of Emmett Till (August 28, 1955). Till’s murder is forever seared into the consciousness of Black America by that casket photograph of his grotesquely disfigured face and pumpkin-sized head, swollen from the torture of the two white men in Money, Mississippi, who later admitted to lynching the 14-year-old Chicago boy.

Then decades later: George Floyd, 46. May 25, 2020. For 9 minutes, 29 seconds, a white cop knelt on his neck until he was dead—a symbol of pure police savagery against the Black body. And yet, Tyre’s case still hits me differently.

The picture of Tyre, 29, lying in a hospital bed, swollen head and eyes from the brutal beating on January 7, and who officials said succumbed to his injuries three days later, reminds me of Emmett Till. Different zip code, same address: America.

Tyre’s slaying is indeed reminiscent of the countless bodies that dangled from poplar trees in the Deep South as symbols of racial hatred and brutality. It arouses within me the same sense of horror, pain and also questions over how any human being could inflict such inhumanity upon another.

Except knowing that the assailants of Tyre’s Black body were Black like him, like us, fills me also with a certain sense of wonder, hurt and rage reserved for betrayers. For it is the Judases that break our hearts, shock the system, cause us to lose hope or faith in all men. Et tu, Brute?

I am not naïve. All skin folk ain’t kinfolk.

I have long been aware of the brutality of police officers—both white and Black. Have witnessed as a young Black man growing up on Chicago’s West Side the “jump-out boys” or plain-clothes detectives or tactical officers from special police units like Memphis’ SCORPION (and now permanently disbanded) unit to which the accused and since terminated officers were assigned. I have witnessed the aggressive brutality of special unit officers and their harshness in the hood, as they spring from their unmarked squad cars like hardened steroidal RoboCops, guns drawn, spewing profanity.

There exists the sentiment among many a Black man that to encounter a rogue Black cop can be worse than facing a white cop, especially a Black cop out to prove that he’s one of them, not one of us. And the knowledge of, and/or experience with their explosive hostility, profanity and willingness to rough you up, even for a traffic stop, can leave you just as nervous as seeing that it is a Black cop versus a white cop approaching in the sideview mirror. Not all. But too many.

2 Bearing the cross a man is among hundreds who carried crosses down Michigan Avenue last New Years Eve website 2
Bearing the cross, a man is among hundreds who carried crosses down Michigan Avenue on New Year’s Eve in December 2016 in Chicago, where hundreds of homicides and thousands of shootings continue to afflict Black and brown neighborhoods. (Photo: John W. Fountain)

In the street, we Black men are at cops’ mercy—Black or white. It matters not that you have no felonies, no warrants, no expired license or vehicle registrations, or have committed no traffic infractions. It matters not whether you are butcher, baker or candlestick maker, politician, preacher, lawyer, journalist or even a cop. We are all well-versed in the hazards of Driving While Black, of Living While Black, of Breathing While Black. None are immune. Old or young.

And this is what makes the murder of Tyre Nichols by Black police officers even more egregious, more heinous, in my mind and soul. Why I could barely watch—as the video released by the authorities in the city of Memphis showed Black hands drag Tyre’s young Black body from his car, beat him, and kick him repeatedly in the face and head, beat his thin Black body with a baton, all the while he appears to show not a single ounce of resistance, until finally his limp body slumps into unconsciousness on the naked street. Why tears flooded my eyes as I watched Black men beat the life out of Tyre, and in pain and torture his soul cried out for his mother: “Ma, ma, ma!” I cried.

John W. Fountain
John W. Fountain
Professor of Journalism at Roosevelt University | [email protected] | Website | + posts

John W. Fountain is a professor of journalism at Roosevelt University and a 2021-22 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, where he is a visiting lecturer at the University of Ghana-Legon and researching his project titled, “Hear Africa Calling: Portraits of Black Americans Drawn to The Motherland.”

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