[ In Memphis, the existence of racial terror and trauma goes back
as far as history can remember. Back to stolen lands of indigenous
people and the stolen lives of African slaves. Back to deadly white
race riots after the Civil War...]
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MEMPHIS POLICE KILLED TYRE NICHOLS. IT’S TRAUMA THAT’S FAMILIAR
TO TACOMA, TOO  
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Michael K. Honey
February 10, 2023
The News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington)
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_ In Memphis, the existence of racial terror and trauma goes back as
far as history can remember. Back to stolen lands of indigenous people
and the stolen lives of African slaves. Back to deadly white race
riots after the Civil War... _

Billy Williams stops by the site in southeast Tacoma on Thursday, May
27, 2021, where Manuel Ellis died while in police custody to pay his
respects after hearing that the state’s attorney general will charge
police officers in , Ellis’ death. “From what I’ve seen and what
I’ve heard, it was the right decision,” Williams said.(AP
PHOTO/Tony Overman /The News Tribune)

 

“We should ask ourselves, what step do we want to take to begin to
move in a different way? Make certain that your life and your energy
are engaged in the task of resisting the venom in our society with a
quiet no.” — James M. Lawson, Jr.

The torture and murder of a young Black man named Tyre Nichols
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by a gang of five Memphis police officers, caught on camera, outraged
the nation. The fact that it was Black people who brutalized Tyre and
did nothing to save him added yet another level of outrage. How could
this happen? What is going on in Memphis?

Black journalist and historian Otis Sanford at the University of
Memphis put it this way: “We are in trauma
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The trauma of Memphis is our trauma too. Police violence haunts
America. Tacoma police, now charged with murder
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killed young Manual Ellis by holding him face-down on the pavement,
the same way police killed George Floyd
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in Minneapolis. As in Memphis, racially impacted poverty, crime, and
homelessness play out every day on our streets. America’s trauma of
socioeconomic dislocation, racial terror and gun violence affects us
all.

In Memphis, the existence of racial terror and trauma goes back as far
as history can remember. Back to stolen lands of indigenous people and
the stolen lives of African slaves. Back to deadly white race riots
after the Civil War, to the burning and dismemberment of young Ell
Persons in a mass lynching
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in 1917, to police brutalization of labor and civil rights advocates
in the 1930s, to the police murder of teenager Larry Payne
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in 1968. The list of racial terror goes on and on. This is not to
mention the gun violence that took Martin Luther King’s life during
the Memphis sanitation strike.

I was an activist in Memphis in the aftermath of King’s death, when
over a dozen white police beat to death young Elton Hayes
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in 1971 after a car chase. We got a law passed that banned police use
of deadly force except to save someone’s life and when no other
means were possible. Later, the city integrated its police force,
which is now 58 percent Black
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But that was not enough. Policing is itself a problem, and whoever
wears that blue uniform can still save you or kill you.

In social justice movements, we tried to implement King’s demands
for adequate income, health care, housing, and education for all.
Instead, we got police militarization and mass incarceration. Spurred
by the pandemic and the violence of the Trump era, America’s history
of racial terror, and our resistance to it, has only accelerated.
Republicans who want to ignore this history or even ban us from
teaching about it can only add to our society’s trauma. 

History shows that we as a people can successfully resist America’s
racial trauma. Through struggle, we have made great gains. It is not
for nothing that people sacrificed to gain voting rights and some
measure of equality. In our current time of horrors, can we still have
hope for change? 

Rev. James Lawson says yes. As a preacher and a practical organizer,
he helped fuel the fires of the civil rights movement, the Memphis
strike, and the powerful, multicultural labor movement in Los Angeles
where he lives today. At 93, Lawson doesn’t give up.

Lawson knows what works to bring about change and what doesn’t. In
2008, the University of Washington brought him to our Tacoma campus
and several Hilltop churches. We turned his talks into a film called
“Love and Solidarity [[link removed]],” and now
into his new book, “Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for
Freedom
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In it, Lawson declares, “Violence has not produced justice anywhere.
In a culture of violence, when we have been weaned on violence, can I
suggest another power that is greater than violence?”

The alternative Lawson spells out is nonviolent direct action, which
he has taught for many years. You can practice it one-on-one, in your
church, your school, your union, your workplace, for yourself and your
community.

In Black religious traditions going back to slavery, hope has provided
our best response to trauma. The family of Tyre Nichols called on us
to not give up on hope. In that vein, Lawson writes, “We should ask
ourselves, what step do we want to take to begin to move in a
different way?” His answer: “Every single one of us must become a
center of resistance to the directions our country is going to the
chaos… Each one of us must become a resister.” Lawson says one can
hope to become “engaged with all of your might to be a person of
compassion and truth who stands with all humanity.”

“In this moment,” Lawson writes, “we need to understand
nonviolence more than ever.” 

We must overcome efforts to ban our history, and we can reinvigorate
our struggles to build even greater social justice movements. In the
human family, hope springs eternal.

Nothing is guaranteed, Lawson tells us, but it is possible that yes,
we can overcome. 

_[MICHAEL HONEY, Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington
Tacoma, is a labor and civil rights and Martin Luther King scholar.
His most recent work includes Revolutionary Nonviolence, Organizing
for Freedom
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James M. Lawson, with Michael Honey and Kent Wong, with Forward by
Angela Davis, (University of California Press, 2022).]_

* police killings
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* racial violence
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* police murders
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* Nonviolence
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* Racism
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* Memphis
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* Tyre Nichols
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* George Floyd
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* Black Lives Matter
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* Tacoma
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* Police
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* Manuel Ellis
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* revolutionary nonviolence
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