The Death of a Black Woman

Sandra Bland is dead....

The people in charge, the authorities, said that she hung herself while in custody at the County Jail in Houston. Sandra had just spent her third night in jail for (allegedly) assaulting a police officer following a traffic stop for failing to signal before changing lanes. The officer claimed that Sandra kicked her as he was trying to physically remove her from her car with Taser in hand. On that morning Sandra’s sister had arranged for the $5,000 bond and she was getting ready to pick Sandra up at the jail. It was too late.

I learned something I didn’t know.
When you kill yourself, it’s a homicide so they do an autopsy.
They get a knife…they start just below the navel and they split you open up to the sternum. When they get there,
they use shears. “They use shears”.

Sandra was 28 years old…she had just moved to Houston, Texas from Chicago for a job opportunity at Prairie View University, her alma mater. She was a college graduate with no prior criminal record of any kind. Failing to signal before changing lanes was the worst mistake of her life; it was fatal.

There is a 52 minute Daschcam video that chronicles the traffic stop and the ensuing verbal exchange between the officer and Sandra. I watched it closely. As I see it, Sandra was trying to be compliant, while at the same time, she was unwilling to relinquish her dignity. Sandra, like all American citizens, has Constitutionally granted rights. The police officer has laws to define his authority.

Her utter frustration, no doubt experienced more than once before, at being detained for something so trivial and petty was putting her to the test. The officer asked Sandra why she was irritated. Sandra told him in a direct, but polite (as I viewed it) way….The officer then asks Sandra to please put out her cigarette. Sandra asked why should she be required to put out her cigarette while sitting in her own car.

Apparently the officer’s emotional limits had been exceeded with Sandra’s questioning his right to ask her to extinguish her cigarette in her own vehicle. He ordered her out of the car…and when she refused repeatedly, he brandished his Taser and threatened to “light her up”. Video shows the officer pinning Sandra to the sidewalk with his knee in her back as he forces her head into the pavement.

It is not easy for some people to uphold their dignity in the face of incivility and oppression. It’s debilitating…..in the face of being a too often ignored minority AND a women, perhaps the most abused and objectified demographic in world history. Sandra Bland was trying to hold onto hers…..she was holding on by her fingernails…..before her eyeballs met the pavement.

I honestly must say that I admired the way she handled herself after she was signaled to pull over by the side of the road. My assumption is that Sandra generally abides by and respects the law…but it appears that she had run out of patience for excessive use of authority (and eventual force). I‘m not saying that she is Rosa Parks...but in her own little way, she is.....and unlike Rosa, she died for her “sins”.

Thankfully, most of us in this country do not have to wake up in the morning and pull out of our driveways wondering if our dignity will be seized and our person detained. That would, no doubt, rattle any of us more privileged citizens of the country.

Sandra’s life isn’t any more important than anyone else’s…..she is no martyr….we will forget about her very soon…and she will be missed by only her family and friends….but, we all got a window into her world. We all know a little bit about a formerly anonymous black female in this country. I tried my best to crawl into her skin when I heard her cries for justice, and dignity lost. I tried to look back from that day of her arrest…and into her yesterday’s.

We will hopefully know soon enough if Sandra Bland died at the hands of someone other than herself. It should never have happened. Her dignity, and her life, seized and extinguished.

Like the Tomb of the Unknown soldier”, Sandra Bland represents a lot to me. For some reason her death has seized me more than the other high profile police related deaths that have happened over the last 18 months. I hear her voice over the audio and I hear a human being, just like me, trying to understand it all…trying to hold her head up. Life isn’t that easy for some people. The death of Sandra Bland serves as a reminder to that Reality.

Sandra Bland is dead…..

“We’re not accepting the report of death suicide,” said the minister, who is pastor of the Greater Ward A.M.E. Church in Houston. “Sandra Bland had just moved from Chicago to Houston to start a new job. You don’t come all the way to Houston just to kill yourself.”

Sandra Bland lifelessly lies in a dark, cold, place somewhere in southern Texas with stitching that holds together the right side of her torso and the left side of her torso. The top of her skull has been removed as well as her brain as is the protocol for autopsies. She won’t ever violate a traffic law again...... and she will never again show the audacity to smoke a cigarette in her own car. She won’t (resist) anything anymore.

The Truth behind Sandra’s mysterious death in her jail cell is pending......

Sandra is scheduled to be buried on Saturday, July 25.