I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • I can’t breathe


    Webster’s Thesaurus defines moral as “ethical, or right and wrong, or proper conduct, personal. Ethical, right, proper, virtuous, just fair, aboveboard; pure, honest, high-minded, saintly…”

    Democracy is defined in the same dictionary as “government by the people, representative government; state having government by the people. Fairness, equality, political equality.”

    After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Arbery in recent days, we have an opportunity to become better people – I hear the voices of our higher angels calling us to be just fair.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

  • notes of two native daughters, a native granddaughter, and a native daughter-in-law


    Two years ago Pretty planned a trip for us and two other family members who live in Texas to visit the newly opened Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama plus several other historical sites related to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. We called it our Civil Rights tour, but we could just as easily have called it our Black Lives Matter tour. This post was originally published here in May, 2018 – I dedicate it to the memory of George Floyd whose funeral service is today.  The work of equal justice for all is never finished.

    This quotation from Maya Angelou is written on the walls of what is now The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration located on the site of a former warehouse where slaves were kept in prison while awaiting their fate in Montgomery, Alabama before the Civil War and the emancipation proclamation. Pretty, our tour guide, had made reservations for us to visit this museum at 9:30 last Saturday morning so our group of four was up and about very early on a gorgeous warm day. Our motel was right around the corner from the museum so we all walked over – still laughing and teasing each other about the winning and losing from the card games the night before.

    The museum itself is open to the public by reservation, but it is not staffed by tour guides. Everyone is allowed to wander at their own pace to read the explanations of the artifacts, documents and jars of dirt collected at verified lynching sites across the country from 1882 to the present. The number of sites is still undetermined but from 1882 – 1968, nearly 5,000 African Americans were reportedly lynched in states across this country. Congressman John Lewis who wrote the foreword for the book Without Sanctuary calls these lynchings the  “hangings, burnings, castrations and torture of an American holocaust…what is it in the human psyche that would drive a person to commit such acts of violence against their fellow citizens?”

    Our group split up as we meandered around through the various amazing exhibits. Pretty and I wandered in one direction, Leora and Carmen went off on their own journey through time as we all saw the intimate lives of American slaves come alive through the magic of hologram technology that portrayed the heartache of families savagely separated from each other, the pleas of the children looking for their mother. Interesting fact:  approximately 12 million people were kidnapped over the three centuries of slave trade to America, according to The Legacy Museum. 12 million living, breathing individuals. I felt overwhelmed by the atrocities with each turn Pretty and I made on our visit.

    Overwhelmed, ashamed, guilty, angry – those are the emotions that swirled around in my mind with each personal account of my legacy as a white person in America. The pictures that showed cheering crowds of us – sometimes in the thousands – while an African American man was hanged, shot, burned…pieces of his body sold as souvenirs…post card pictures made…popcorn sold. I dreaded looking at the people watching the horrific acts in a party mood with as much fear that I would recognize someone in the crowds as the fear I felt for forcing myself to look at the actual horrific acts perpetrated by the mob violence. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Leora and Carmen felt.

    “The museum connects the legacy of slavery with subsequent decades of racial terrorism and lynching. Visitors see the link between codified racial hierarchy enforced by elected official and law enforcement with both the past and the present. Contemporary issues surrounding mass incarceration are explored with interactive exhibits and examination of important issues surrounding conditions of confinement, police violence, and the administration of criminal justice.”  (Legacy Museum – Equal Justice Initiative)

    Interesting fact: One in three black male babies born today is expected to go to jail or prison in his lifetime.  One in three. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. In 1979 when Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, roughly 320,000 people were in prison in our country. Now, the current total incarcerated is 2.1 million people with a higher percentage of people of color.

    As Pretty and I were getting ready to leave the museum, Pretty wheeled me to a very large interactive map of the USA. By merely clicking on an individual state, the number of lynched persons discovered to date in that state was highlighted. I foolishly couldn’t resist my native state of Texas. The total number was 338. The interactive map also showed the details by county: the name of the person and the date of the lynching. I made the mistake of going to my home county, Grimes, and saw the names and dates of 10 black men lynched there. Right in my home county. Where were my grandparents on those days, or did I really want to know?

    Shortly thereafter, Pretty and I left the museum. Leora and Carmen were not far behind us. We were all truly lost in our own thoughts and the walk back to the hotel was very quiet.

    As usual, Pretty saved the day by encouraging us to finish packing for checkout, finish the leftover food in our room, and call for our car. We were headed for what turned out to be redemption for us all at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and a woman named Wanda who helped us shift our focus from evil to good. Hallelujah!

    daughter-in- law Pretty, daughter Leora,

    granddaughter Carmen,  daughter Sheila

    (clockwise left to right)

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • STOP KILLING US – a peaceful protest in Red Bank, South Carolina


     

    Protest in Red Bank, South Carolina, USA on June 02, 2020

    WISTV.com

    If all lives matter, then why are you not OUTRAGED by Americans being murdered, tear gassed and arrested for peaceful protests? (sign held by woman in the middle)

    If a small percentage of looters discredits an entire movement, THEN what does a small percentage of BAD COPS DO??? (sign held by woman at the end)

    My thanks to our friend Michelle who came to take Spike for his walk this morning and mentioned the protest this week in Red Bank, South Carolina. She told me two of our local TV stations, WISTV and WLTXTV, had aired a brief broadcast about the gathering this past Tuesday, June 2nd.,  in the midst of the much lengthier coverage for the larger protests continuing this week in Columbia, the state capital.

    Minneapolis, St. Paul, New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Atlanta – I’ve watched this week as hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets of our major cities to protest the senseless murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis. The news coverage has been 24/7 since the crime was committed on May 25th.

    Red Bank is not an incorporated community, but it is locally recognized and identified by name as a census-designated place in Lexington County which is distinguished primarily as the politically conservative next-door neighbor of the more liberal larger city of Columbia in Richland County. Crossing the Congaree River from one county to the next sometimes reflects more than a geographical change on a map.

    According to the news reports, Highway 55 Burgers Shakes and Fries teamed up with Sandpit Fitness in their shopping center to offer a place for the protesters to peacefully gather to make their voices heard on the matters involving the death of George Floyd. Like their counterparts in Columbia and other cities across the world, their messages were direct, simple, profound. Stop killing us, won’t you?

    The police were called by someone who feared these people and their signs in Red Bank. However, no arrests were made.

    Amendment 1 to the Constitution of the United States says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

    The people of Red Bank are citizens of the United States; they are entitled to petition our government for equal justice and fair treatment by police officers who are sworn to serve and protect all citizens. They may not have a town hall, but they have a right to their voices.

    The events of the past week since the murder of George Floyd have weighed heavily on us in our home. Pretty and I are outraged by the police actions we have seen with our own eyes as we are also outraged by the ongoing failure of the leadership of our country at the highest levels. The president is a shameful disgrace devoid of any pretense of compassion. He stood as the fairy tale emperor with no clothes when he held a Bible in front of a church after an assault on peaceful American protesters to make way for him to pass by.

    And yet as I have watched the diversity of the crowds peacefully protesting, I share a hope with former President Obama who admonishes us to look to the next generation for answers to the problems of race we leave them as part of our legacy. We should have done better. Now they must do better if our democracy is to survive.

    To the Red Bank peaceful protesters for a better nation, I say thanks to you for your courage to exercise your rights. Onward, together.

    Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • the murder of George Floyd in america – anger, fear, hatred, uprising


    Videos of the killing of a 46-year-old black man in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25th. by four policemen responding to a call concerning a fake $20 bill allegedly passed at a nearby corner grocery store have spread as fast as Covid-19 in nursing homes and have been viewed more than once by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

    No video viewer is likely to forget the final nine minutes of George Floyd’s life in which he repeatedly begged for breath from policeman Derek Chauvin who sat nonchalantly with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck while two other policemen, Thomas Lane and Alexander Kueng, held him down on the ground to further impede his breathing. Ton Thau, the fourth policeman, walked around the scene but also ignored Mr. Floyd’s cries for help.

    The Minneapolis Police Department fired the four policemen this week. Yet, while local, state and federal agencies investigate the murder, no arrests have been made as of this morning. Black people and their allies are outraged by a failure of the justice system to press criminal charges against these four policemen, another failure in both a long and short list of police brutality against people of color – particularly black males – with no end in sight.

    I am angry, but my anger is unlike the anger of our black citizens who must couple their anger with fear for their lives. As commentator Joy Reid said this morning, “Every black person in America now considers themselves to be hunted.”

    As for the uprisings in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area this week, I rely on the words of Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said a riot is the language of the unheard. Point taken. We must do better.

    Finally, heed these words from Dr. King that hit home to me today as clearly as the daily death number updates from the Covid-19 pandemic:

    Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

    We must do better.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • how did Stella really get her groove back?


    Getting our collective “grooves” back across the world will be far more complicated, doubtless a much lengthier process than Stella’s in the 1998 film shown above. But hey, we have to start somewhere. Originally published here in February, 2013, I’m dedicating this re-run to the groove seekers during Covid-19. 

    I was talking to Leora (who is one of my favorite soul sisters) tonight when she said something that crackled across the phone and smacked me upside the head with a satellite wave whack. It’s time for me to get my groove back, she said; and I understood immediately what she meant because I knew that was my problem, too. I’d lost my groove. Somewhere in the midst of the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say, I’d buried my groove as surely as I’d buried the ashes of my mother in the little Fairview cemetery in Grimes County ten months ago.

    I hadn’t heard the reference to “getting your groove back” since I watched the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back years ago, but I remembered the essentials. Apparently a young sexy shirtless Taye Diggs was the spark plug for a middle-aged Angela Bassett’s recovery of her misplaced spontaneity, the optimism for her life. As I recall, Stella (Ms. Bassett) located her groove in less than two hours of screen time to happily rejoin the human race she had forsaken. Sigh. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Fixer-upper for lost groove. Quick, fun, and easy.

    Let’s not kid ourselves. I’m fairly confident a shirtless man won’t be the impetus for getting an old lesbian’s groove back.  I can also say with certainty the process will take longer than two hours. Regardless, I do recollect Stella’s outlook became brighter – she seemed more hopeful for her future at the end of the film.

    I’m beginning to feel a small crack in the tortoise shell of grief that has covered me during the last year. Death and dying are two separate but equal tragedies that exact a price on those who watch and wait. The tragedies remind me of my own mortality which brings questions of legacy and the life I chose to live. For those of us who tend to be contemplative about the meaning of life on a regular basis, facing our own mortality is a daunting undertaking. Undertaking. Hah. Get it?

    The grieving doesn’t end, but the images I carry from the tragedies dim and dwindle away leaving me with a knowledge of the importance of this moment in this day in this time because I am not promised another breath. I’m thinking that’s my first step toward getting my groove back.

    *******************************

    Stay safe, get groovy and stay tuned.