Aurorans Pray For Justice, Healing After Weeks Of Protests

AURORA, IL — Hundreds of people joined together Sunday outside Aurora’s St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church to pray for racial justice and reconciliation after more than two weeks of nationwide protests following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

"We have come together to commit ourselves in prayer, and through prayer, to voice the need for justice in the face of injustice, to request healing in our hearts, spirits and community and to pursue … reconciliation among ourselves, the nation, and the world that best reflects the community," St. John Rev. Jesse Hawkins said to the group of more than 200 people socially distanced and wearing masks outside the church.

"Today, as a collective body, we have united to pray for the wisdom and the direction to demolish national, regional and local systematic and systemic injustices that oppress and disenfranchise so many," Hawkins continued.

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In his sermon that lasted nearly half an hour, Hawkins spoke of the history of oppression and injustice that black people have faced since Africans were first brought to America as slaves in 1619. Throughout the past four centuries, black people have been viewed as inhuman and thought of as "beasts of burden" for white people to use for economic gain, Hawkins said.

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Black people were finally given rights under the U.S. Constitution after the Civil War, but that didn’t change how white people viewed them, Hawkins said.

"The 13th and 14th and 15th amendments were supposedly created to give the rights of freedom liberty and citizenship to the formerly enslaved and their descendants," Hawkins said. "But here’s the problem: Once one has been seen as, described as, and acted upon as less than — in this instance less than human — then no amount of legislation or legalization can change the mind of those who have profited and continue to profit off the labor of the beast of burden for the instrument of economic power or political gain."

Hawkins said generations of black people have grown up in America with the brutal murder of Emmett Till “seared into our consciousness.” Till was beaten, mutilated and lynched in 1955 by two white men in Mississippi after being accused of offending a white woman in a store. The two men were acquitted by a jury but admitted to killing Till in an interview a year later.

"For years, black people have had to look at Emmett Till's mangled and disfigured body lying in his casket, seared into our consciousness and burned into our very souls," Hawkins said.

"This is why, now in 2020, we find ourselves now in this moment, watching and listening as African descendants in the United States and others around the world take to the streets to demand justice for black people," Hawkins continued. "This is why we find ourselves in this movement, watch and listening as African descendants in the United States and others around the world take to the streets to demand enough is enough."

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Hawkins said the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for racial justice and equality will not end until demands for change are met.

"We’ve asked, we’ve petitioned, we’ve protested, and we’ve prayed for the inhabitants of this nation to stop killing us. We cannot breathe," Hawkins said. "In every instance, our cries for fairness, rightness and equality in justice have been minimized and ignored altogether.

"I stand here today to abuse anyone of the notion that this too shall pass," he continued. "No. Black people have had their fill of being harassed, stepped on, stepped over, stomped on, terrorized, beaten and bloodied. Black people have surpassed the point of submitting to being cheated, pimped, prostituted, lied on and lynched because of the color of their skin."

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The 90-minute worship service also included a prayer led by Rev. John Bell, pastor of Aurora’s Wesley United Methodist Church, and Aurora Police Department chaplain Rev. Jerome Leake, who gave the service’s invocation.

St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church sponsored the event along with five other religious organizations in Aurora — the Fox Valley Christian Ministerial Alliance, Wesley United Methodist Church, Progressive Baptist Church, New England Congregational Church and Temple B'nai Israel.

Watch the service below: