Taking Back Their Power: Black veterans seek recognition, recompense
for generations of racial inequity
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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
When Richard Brookshire finished his tour as a combat medic in
Afghanistan in 2011, he couldn't wait to get on with his life.
He enrolled in Fordham University and earned a degree in political
science, graduating magna cum laude and going on to earn a
master's degree in public policy at Columbia University.
Brookshire had been out of graduate school only a few months when, in
2017, amid a rising tide of violence
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against Black communities in the U.S., a white supremacist brutally
killed
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a 66-year-old Black man in New York City. The murderer was also an
Army veteran. And, chillingly, he had gone through basic training with
Brookshire, deployed in the same brigade, even left Afghanistan at the
same time.
For Brookshire, who is Black and gay, the realization - at a
moment of increasing racist rhetoric and violence across the United
States - that he served alongside someone who harbored such rage
unearthed painful memories of racist aggressions during his service,
plunging him into a frightening mental health crisis.
"I was overwhelmed by it all - by PTSD, by this experience
of having had to be a shell of myself to survive the racist violence
of the military culture," Brookshire said.
As he set out to get better, Brookshire became aware that not only did
many other Black veterans need the kind of help he was getting, they
weren't getting it, and they weren't empowered to advocate
for themselves. He began to realize, he said, that their experiences
were not unlike those of generations of Black men who have served in
the military - unremembered, unrecognized and, particularly in
the case of millions of Black veterans who served during the Jim Crow
era of racial segregation, unrewarded.
Out of that realization came a passion that Brookshire, now 35, has
dedicated himself to ever since. He is co-founder of Black Veterans
Project
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, a nonprofit whose mission is to unearth the stories of Black men and
women who served in the U.S. armed forces, to conduct research into
the unique barriers they face, and to advocate for restorative justice
for Black veterans denied benefits. In 2020, amid the national
reckoning following the murder of George Floyd
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by police, he also helped found Black Veterans Empowerment Council
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, a coalition of more than 15 Black veterans organizations working to
advance legislation that would help mitigate the inequities in Black
veterans' housing, education, employment and health care.
As of today - Veterans Day - Black Veterans Project is in
the early stages of planning a storytelling venture designed to
elevate the experiences of Black veterans as never before. The plan is
to conduct in-person, on-camera interviews of many of the more than 2
million Black veterans across the country. Eventually, the group hopes
to create a multimedia digital monument to the stories of Black
service members "who, since the beginning of this nation,"
Brookshire said, "have served their country even when it did not
serve them."
READ MORE
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