In the days leading up to today's scheduled virtual 5K race, I realized that this blog post would not be my usual account about the challenges of the hills, my pace, my heart rate. Like most people in this country and many people around the world, I've been horrified about the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd while he was in police custody, killed by the weight of a policeman's knees to his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, with two other policemen holding him down on the street with their knees, and a fourth policeman who did nothing to stop as Mr. Floyd called for help, "I can't breathe." And I knew that George Floyd's murder by police was not an isolated experience, especially for people of color in this country.
George Floyd's murder has galvanized people around the country, including many in Atlanta, to enter the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights of "freedom of speech" and "the right of the people peaceably to assemble", risking their lives from exposure to three pathogens:
- the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic,
- the virus of looters and rioters profaning the message of peaceful protestors, and
- the virus of more police violence, in too many cases attacking instead of protecting the people rightfully expressing their anger in voice and with signs, or the press representatives who bring their message to the world, also constitutionally protected by freedom of the press.
On Thursday I was moved by the eloquent words of Reverend Al Sharpton at the eulogy for Mr. Floyd:
"...George Floyd's story has been the story of black folks, because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed to being is you kept your knee on our neck."
At that moment, I reconsidered my original plan to run today's 5K at Stone Mountain Park. The reasons all pertained to the history of Stone Mountain and its racist symbols: a gathering place for the Ku Klux Klan, the infamous carving on the north face of the mountain memorializing Confederate rebel leaders fighting to maintain slavery in the southern states, the major roads prominently named after those leaders.
As I read about the history of the carving, I learned that the carving is hardly historic. The carving wasn't completed until 1972, a decade after I was born. And even if it had been historic, the rebel monuments are not innocuous symbols of regional heritage. I recommend the August 15, 2017 editorial in the New York Times by history Professor Karen L. Cox:
Prof. Cox writes that "Confederate monuments have always been symbols of white supremacy." That phrase and much more in her article changed my own mind about these monuments when I first read the editorial a few years ago.
The main reason that I decided to go ahead and run today at Stone Mountain Park was because of the diversity of the people that patronize the park every day. The walkers and runners represent all races and ethnicities, genders and ages, and probably the entire range of religions and political opinions as well. It's one of the safest places to run in metro Atlanta because other people are always around, vehicular traffic is restricted, and the speed limit is relatively slow, especially on the south side of the mountain, opposite the carving. In these days of COVID-19, there is almost always enough room to give 6-feet physical distance from other people, as long as you're willing to adjust your route by a few steps.
I resolved to run today with acute awareness of running in a place with painful symbolism for many Americans. I also resolved to share with you my thoughts and feelings as I ran five kilometers in memory of a fellow Georgia resident and runner, Ahmaud Arbery, who was murdered near Brunswick, Georgia on February 23, 2020.
I deliberately began the day on a positive note. Normally I drive into the park through the main gate on the northeast side of the park, on the road named after the Confederate president, where the carving comes into view on a curve as drivers approach the center of the park. But a few days ago when I looked up the name of the road leading to the smaller western gate, James P. Rivers Memorial Drive, I learned that Mr. Rivers served as Stone Mountain's first African-American police chief, from 1988 to 1995. He was remembered as a generous man who taught the current police chief "how to give back to the community." I entered the park through James P. Rivers Memorial Drive, even though it took a couple more minutes to drive that route from my home. As I have a choice, I may never enter through the main gate again, at least not until the name of the road is changed to honor someone more deserving.
After my warmup miles, I walked down to the covered bridge. Our family regularly drives across the bridge to picnic on the island in the middle of Stone Mountain Lake, as this is Bonnie's parents' favorite site inside Stone Mountain Park. The bridge was originally constructed in Athens, Georgia by W. W. King in 1891, and moved to Stone Mountain Park in 1965.
What the sign omits is more information about W. W. King. Earlier this week, I learned that Washington W. King was an African-American resident of Atlanta. His father, Horace King, was born into slavery. In the decades after the Civil War, the King family built bridges throughout the state of Georgia. I've linked below to a long article about the bridges constructed by Washington W. King and information about the King family.
As I began running 5 kilometers over what turned out to be the next 25 minutes and 35 seconds, I reflected on my own southern heritage. More numbers: 1619, the year that African slaves were brought to Hampton, Virginia, not far from the landing place of my first American ancestor in James City in 1635. After my father passed away in 2005, I inherited his box of family genealogy materials. In going through his papers, I recall my horror seeing an 1850 census report, revealing that one of my predecessors in south Georgia listed 20 slaves. That firmly repudiated the family myth that my ancestors were too poor to have owned slaves.
Having grown up in a segregated town in southeast Texas, I'm not as shocked as many other white people seem to be when I hear about racist crimes. I grew up regularly hearing white people figuratively putting their knees on African-American people's necks. And some of these people didn't hesitate to chastise other white people like me who came to question why was racism acceptable. Regretably it wasn't until my adult years that I came to completely reject the white supremacist culture. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention in Texas history class in the mid-1970's - or maybe it wasn't taught - but I only learned within the past few years that the Anglo-Americans that settled in the 1820's in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas, not far from where I grew up, had a "grievance" with the Mexican laws prohibiting slavery. That was one of their motivations for independence from Mexico, to keep their slaves in bondage. Upon the founding of the Republic of Texas in 1836, the constitution declared in its "General Provisions, section 9:"
"Congress shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from the United States of America from bringing their slaves into the Republic with them, and holding them by the same tenure by which such slaves were held in the United States; nor shall Congress have power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slaveholder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves, without the consent of Congress, unless he or she shall send his or her slave or slaves without the limits of the Republic. No free person of African descent, either in whole or in part, shall be permitted to reside permanently in the Republic, without the consent of Congress..."
So this what the "heroic" defenders of the Alamo fought for?
As I approached the midpoint of my run, my thoughts turned to the death of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Georgia. Mr. Arbery was murdered on February 23 of this year, but the crime was not widely reported until the first days of May. The first two perpetrators were not arrested until May 7, and the third accomplice who filmed video of the last part of the chase and Mr. Arbery's death remained free until May 21. Like many other runners, I ran 2.23 miles in Ahmaud Arbery's memory on May 8, which would have been his 26th birthday.
Yesterday I had read news reports on the June 4 hearing of the three defendants, and testimony from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The GBI investigator testified that Mr. Arbery was chased by three men in two trucks, and was hit by one of the trucks earlier in the chase. Mr. Arbery attempted to escape but he was trapped on the road between the two trucks, which many of us have now seen in the appalling video recorded by one of the defendants. In the words of the investigator:
Yesterday I had read news reports on the June 4 hearing of the three defendants, and testimony from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The GBI investigator testified that Mr. Arbery was chased by three men in two trucks, and was hit by one of the trucks earlier in the chase. Mr. Arbery attempted to escape but he was trapped on the road between the two trucks, which many of us have now seen in the appalling video recorded by one of the defendants. In the words of the investigator:
"I believe Mr. Arbery was being pursued, and he ran until he couldn't run anymore. And it was: turn his back to a man with a shotgun, or fight with his bare hands against a man with a shotgun, and he chose to fight."
As I turned around to run the second half of the route, my situation on the peaceful road at Stone Mountain Park was nothing at all like what Ahmaud Arbery had experienced. I was running past dozens of people out for their morning exercise, many of them with black skin, but I knew that I had absolutely nothing to fear from any of them. No one was jeering at me or threatening me. No one was trying to hit me with their vehicles. We were courteously giving each other 6-foot radius when passing to maintain physical distancing in the age of COVID-19, but otherwise everyone who didn't know each other was minding their own business. I passed two women wearing hijabs, who could have been the target of a Muslim ban had they recently tried to enter the country. I was confident that the people around me would have helped me if anything bad had happened to me, and really my only risk might have been falling. I was completely safe among them, even though I knew none of their names.
The investigator's words rang in my head: "he ran until he couldn't run anymore." I tried to put myself in Ahmaud Arbery's shoes, trying to imagine what it might have been like to try to outrun the killers. This wasn't at all about my time in the race. It was about trying to create in myself the pain that I might have felt if I was desperately trying to escape pursuit by dangerous men. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't run to my absolute limit just based on my imagination. And I knew that neither I nor Ahmaud Arbery nor most other people could have outrun armed men in two trucks.
I pushed myself to the finish line for the 5K. I was emotionally spent from the experience, but I also hope that I became more empathetic. And after I had finished, I reflected on the privilege that I had today, one that Ahmaud Arbery did not have on February 23: to run a couple of recovery miles, and then return unmolested to my home.
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