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Say Their Names

by Curtis Bunn et al, 2021

Published: 2022.07.19

Home > Book Reviews > Black History > Say Their Names

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry

★★★★ (of 5)

(* 323 pages does not include Foreword, Bibliography, Acknowledgements, or About The Authors.)

 

This book, which I found at the local library, attempts to place the current Black Lives Matter movement (and closely related social justice struggles) into historical perspective, comparing and contrasting it to the civil rights movements of earlier times, but also looking toward a better future. Author DaMaris B. Hill described Say Their Names as “a journey into the collective and immediate consciousness of Black Lives Matter. The book skirts across the authors’ memory and reader’s current perspectives on race and what we know of America.” The inside of the book’s dust jacket says the five authors create “a cohesive and comprehensive understanding of racial inequality in America.”

The book is divided into 12 chapters, with the longest ones first, as follows:

 

Black Lives Matter — both the hashtag and the broader movement — arose much earlier than the killing of George Floyd in 2020, of course. It stemmed from the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the subsequent (2013) acquittal of Martin’s admitted killer. BLM gained steam and much wider notoriety in the aftermath of the 2014 police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. However, something fundamental changed in 2020, when the protests following Floyd’s death became worldwide instead of only one city at a time (there were nearly 8,000 simultaneous demonstrations in the United States alone, and an unknown number of concurrent protests in dozens of other nations as diverse as farflung as Australia, Japan, Brazil, Denmark, and the United Kingdom). The authors here try to address that sea change in the movement, as well as historical ties and the current state of African American life.

The first chapter, in addition to being the longest, was also the least-cohesive, which tempered my enjoyment of the rest of the book. It started off well, tracing the historical roots of the BLM movement — not only the three women who got “Black Lives Matter” off the ground, but their forebears in Ida B. Wells, Charlotta Bass, Shirely Chisholm, and other women who fought for Black equality over the years. The chapter also looked at how BLM was different than previous movements — for one thing, it intentionally did not have a specific lone leader or spokesperson at the forefront: no Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Huey Newton, or Fred Hampton, the killings of whom seemingly disintegrated the movements to which they were attached. BLM is also different in that it centered LGBTQ+ activists rather than hiding or shunning them.

Another difference — perhaps the most profound for on-the-fence white observers — was that white-led protests were happening around the country at about the same time, and it was clear from news footage that the pro-Black protests were treated far differently by law enforcement than far-right-wing protests. BLM marches and vigils, even those comprised mostly of unarmed students or family groups, and even those heavily attended by allied white people, were met with armies of riot-gear clad police weilding impatient batons and streaming tear gas. Elsewhere heavily armed white men were jovially greeted by grinning police. The contrast was too stark for many to stomach. The book uses as the pinnacle of this juxtaposition the January 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, D.C., where a handful of worried-looking cops behind flimsy barricades mostly shouted but then stepped aside when the crazed whites rushed the Capitol building. Law enforcement didn’t respond with deadly force until the mob was already inside (and only killed one seditionist). Afterward, the great majority of the attackers strolled jovially away — it was weeks later when the first criminal charges were filed, and even now (more than 18 months afterward), less than half the assailants have been charged with any crimes. (Most of the defendants face misdemeanor counts for “demonstrating in the Capitol”, “disorderly conduct”, “being in a restricted building”, and/or “disruptive activity”.

But about halfway through, the first chapter began to exhibit problems. For one thing, much like many modern news stories, it relied on tweets as sources. It also referred to things like “the Autonomous Zone” in Minneapolis without explaining them for any readers who might not have been in the thick of the tweets in late 2020. By the end of this chapter, it felt like the author had collected too many quotations from interviewees to use judiciously and simply began inserting them without transition or explanation. Several of the quotations were not even complete sentences.

The second chapter, nearly as long, explores far more than its title. It stands alone as a powerful treatise on the racial inequities in healthcare, inequities that were on full display during the Covid-19 pandemic. It retraces the history of medical malpractice against Black people, including some infamous incidents but also a few I hadn’t heard of before. It goes right up to the present day when Black people — even wealthly and famous ones — are often not treated equally when receiving healthcare, and when surveys of medical students show that very old and very false information about Black people is still believed by startlingly high percentages. Bunn doesn’t shy away from the other side of the coin — that significant numbers of Black people were hesitant about participating in vaccination trials and even excoriated those who did.

The next two chapters overlapped quite a bit and — for me, at least — served only to reinforce what I’ve already read in the news over the past several years and in a number of books on the subjects (like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? by Maya Schenwar (ed.), Policing The Black Man by Angela J. Davis (ed.), and others). They were well-written, concise yet comprehensive, full of both data and heartfelt anecdotes.

The following chapter could have been better. It explored the role of the Black church in the various civil rights movements, how the church was at the forefront (or was often perceived to be at the forefront) of the 1950s and 1960s movements but is noticeably more absent during the age of Black Lives Matter. There were interesting portions in this chapter but it was tainted by too many in-depth stories of redemption — it seems the author forgot the theme of the chapter several times and instead of focusing on what these people had to say about the matter, he focused on the specifics of their lives. Also, it seemed there was little to no conclusion on the matter; the chapter ends with a long quotation from one of the pastors that didn’t seem to fit.

The rest of the book was made up of shorter chapters — brief essays, most of them — that were all well-written and informative. The one on the wealth gap makes reference to the numerous instances of white mobs destroying Black wealth, like the Tulsa massacre described in another book I read recently, The Burning, by Tim Madigan, and follows the lines all the way to today, where the wealth gap between Black and white is as wide as it’s been in several decades.

 

Contributors

None of the five listed authors were known to me before reading this book, and none of them (apparently) have Wikipedia pages — at least none that I could find. In the “About the Authors” section at the back of the book, all five are described as journalists at one point or another. In addition to journalism, they have: written novels (Bunn), won a Putlizer Prize (Cottman, as part of a Newsday team), worked for The Washington Post (Gaines, Charles, Harriston), worked at BET (Charles), and taught and/or lectured at universities (Harriston, Gaines, Cottman).

In the foreword, Marc H. Morial (former New Orleans mayor, president of the National Urban League, and Lousiana state senator) writes that the five journalists who co-authored this book are well positiioned to “put the Black Lives Matter movement and the cultural uprising of 2020 into historical perspective”.

 

Conclusion

Overall, I’m glad I read the book. At times it was not enjoyable — sometimes because the answers the authors seek have not yet arrived, but other times because the writing and/or editing was subpar. But it was extremely informative and tried to tie together as many threads of current social justice movements as possible — as they relate to Black Lives Matter and the plight of Black people in the U.S. today. I do recommend the book.

 





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