Brittany Packnett Instagram – I often think about the convenient American narrative that terrorism is only a foreign reality. It shouldn’t be alive anywhere—and yet the often ignored domestic terrorism that Black and Indigenous people have and continue to face in this country is forgotten for the comfortable illusion of exceptionalism.
I also often think about how that sense of exceptionalism is rooted in the evangelical notion that we are the most moral nation in the world—a dominant American idea that ignores the pain we cause here and around the world.
The rise of the blonde, blue eyed white American Christ was never never reflective of the truth—but it was the supposed cover for a multitude of sins. The Klan, after all, identities as a Christian organization.
Part of the deliberate domestic terrorism against Black people target our spaces of worship with great intention: to send the message that they believe their God had ordained them to take us out. That no space we deem safe or sacred will ever be respected by them. That our audacity to build sanctified institutions and structures of social change in one were expressly forbidden, from our Churches to our Muslim Mosques and anywhere between.
The day these four little girls were bombed to death in their Sunday best frilly socks and bows felt, I’m sure, eerily similar to the day Mother Bethel was attacked as her Black saints prayed on the inside just a few years ago.
Don’t let the Black and white footage fool you: the past is prologue.
Repost from @naacp_ldf
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61 years ago, a bomb exploded during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls: Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11).
In the aftermath of the bombing, two more black youths, Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware, were shot to death in Birmingham.
All 6 children were involuntarily martyrs of a movement to which this country still owes a tremendous debt.
We cannot forget the sacrifices made to bring America closer to its professed ideals. Today, we honor and continue to fight for equal rights in their name. | Posted on 15/Sep/2024 22:28:36
