Howard Cooper, Towson, MD. 1885

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the roots of the oppression so many still face today. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the connection to nature. Rather, what makes me cry, what makes me angry, is the connection to the ground on which we walk. When I was at the Legacy Museum, created by Bryan Stevenson, I saw an exhibit of different samples of soil from lynchings across the United States. On the second shelf from the top, was a glass urn of soil. Brown, chunky, bits of grass, it somehow looked familiar. Written on the container: Howard Cooper, Towson, MD. 1885. Why have I not learned about this in school? Why is there not a memorial for those who were lynched in Maryland? What has it taken me this long to know? I walk around Towson at least five times a week. Some of my closest friends live in Towson. And here’s a place in which someone was killed for no reason. Someone was racially terrorized. And I bet it was not just one, but many. Many who suffered trauma not only on that day, but every day after. And somehow it got covered up.

Now, it’s not lynchings but pointless killings in Baltimore City. It’s police brutality. It’s unbalanced access to education. It’s an increase in domestic violence. It is the city of Baltimore: it’s secrets of murder forever swept under the rug.

Over the past four days, I’ve been constantly surrounded by the pain and suffering my race created for others. It is because of people of my race that a system of oppression was created and constantly enforced. I’m overwhelmed by the feelings of frustration and anger when thinking about the complacency I’ve been taught, and the idea that so many of my race do not understand the contributions we have made to the black community’s pain and suffering. I am swimming through these emotions and working towards finding what to do with these intense feelings. I’ve been working hard to come up with a plan in how I can make change. I know I will write a letter to the Maryland government to come claim their history of lynching. I know I will present to my school on my experience. I know I will come back and chaperone during college. But I am worried that is not enough. I am scared. I am scared for my complacency, for my friends’, for my peers’. I am scared for my friends who identify as people of color. I am nervous that I have done a disservice to them. And I don’t know how to fix it.

Mollie