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Rittenhouse memes not guilty5/7/2023 Here's the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. And at every moment that that's happened, there's been a brave and courageous and brilliant black voice to say, "No, this is what our story is. As a black folk in America, you know, we've always been framed and constructed and talked about and narrated by other people. We have an opportunity to tell our own stories to offer our own truths. Hill: Because, you know, we have an opportunity to narrate our own history. But why is it so important that we are also disseminating our history in that way? Lee: I'm gonna say, why does it matter? Especially, I feel like we're going through that so-called reckoning and other people are being exposed to our history. If I'm in the Bay, I'm going to Marcus, you know what I mean because if I'm in Westfield, I go to Hakim's, you know, because we got to support all these black bookstores. Hill: If I'm in L.A., you know, I'm going to Eso Won. And then I was like, "Okay, when I get older, one day, I'm going to create for somebody else what was created for me." And so, when I got a little bit of resources and some time and some inspiration, I said, "I'm going to open the store up." And for the last five years, we've been rocking, man. And so, Uncle Bobbie's push got me into the bookstores. Hill: And so, he introduced me to the black publishing tradition and the idea that black people had a distinctive tradition and voice and genre. And I got put on the books because my dad's brother Bobbie, Bobbie Lee Hill, who had all the ebonies, all the jets, all the black enterprises in the house. In North Philly and West Philly, I would go to black bookstores, I would learn about myself and my race and my culture and my identity and my faith and all these things in ways that school couldn't give me. I opened it up because I was a child of black bookstores. It's a bookstore that I opened up in Philly in 2017. Hill: Oh, man, Uncle Bobbie's is my favorite project that I've ever done. Lee: Without the video that Darnella Frazier shot, it's unlikely a jury would have convicted Derek Chauvin of murder in April of 2021, but that video and others like it are not without traumatic consequences. It had the power of a still photo, but it also was a long enduring video, and watching that unsettled the conscience of people who didn't normally see stuff like that. Marc Lamont Hill: What made George Floyd stunning to people was that for over 9 minutes they had to look at it. We all but witnessed in no small part because of a teenage girl with a cellphone camera with the wherewithal and the courage to hit record. And finally, with Chauvin's knees still on his neck, we watched him go still. We felt his please, that he couldn't breathe in our own chest. And in those final seconds, we heard Floyd cry out for his mother. During Derek Chauvin's trial in the spring of 2021, body cam evidence from officers on the scene when George Floyd was killed proved that Chauvin had actually kept his knee on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, 43 seconds longer than originally reported. (BACKGROUND VOICES).īut in the swirl of news reports and eyewitness accounts of what happened on that day, Memorial Day 2020, something had been lost. And often, in the middle of those protests, the crowd would pause to observe 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence. Activists, lawmakers, and laymen demanded reform and respect for black lives. Over the coming days and weeks, people around the country marched and chanted in what would become the largest protest movement in U.S.
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