Ricky Jones: Chris Wells reminds us there is a cost to being Black and brave

Editor's note: This column discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can call the 24/7 U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or chat online at suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat.

Being Black and brave in America has costs. It always has.

Recently, friends and family gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, to bury yet another person who consistently participated in protests prompted by the death of Breonna Taylor in 2020. This time the deceased was Chris Wells, who was found dead in his apartment apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Wells was 33.

Wells was the latest in a sad number of protesters around the country who have died from suicide or under suspect circumstances in recent years. Like many before them, these everyday people participated in still needed protest movements in hopes of forcing America to bridge the yawning gap between its actions and ideals of freedom, liberty and justice for all. Unfortunately, the racial socio-political power dynamics have not changed in most American cities after protests and deaths.

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Racial resistance and Black bloodshed

This is not new. In fact, there is a long history of it.

The sad truth is most stories of racial resistance dating back to America’s infancy have often ended in Black bloodshed, ruin, solitude and death. Here’s a brief sample of the brutality many American politicians and their supporters do not want taught in schools from kindergarten to college today. Seriously, they have actually passed laws to prevent such instruction because it “puts America in a bad light” or makes white people “feel guilty.”

Thirty-seven years before American colonists claimed independence from “oppressive” England, they proved they had no problem oppressing and killing other human beings because of the color of their skin. The Black bondsman Cato and compatriots rebelled against slavery in 1739 South Carolina. As a result, he and his followers were defeated, captured, and decapitated. Two years later, over 150 Black people were caught and arrested in the “New York Insurrection of 1741.” Most were hanged and burned. The leaders were gibbeted and left to rot in public.

In 1829, David Walker, a free and literate Black man, dared to pen a pamphlet commonly called “The Appeal.” In it he argued slavery was “morally and religiously repugnant.” The pamphlet was banned in many parts of the country and a price was placed on Walker’s head. He was found dead in 1830. We recently marked the anniversary of Nat Turner’s revolt against slavery in August of 1831 in Virginia. It ended with Turner being hunted down and killed. It goes on and on . . . and on!

We don’t remember most Black foot soldiers’ names who have died in the freedom struggle throughout American history. Even the endings of the Black heroes we have immortalized are often wretched. The system of calcified racial stratification not only emboldens white people who mistreat Black people, it has also bent and broken Black folks to the point that they will betray and abandon their own. Black freedom fighters Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey could attest to that. Both were caught and killed after loyal slaves told on them in 1800 and 1822, respectively.

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In the modern era, Jackie Robinson didn’t just integrate baseball, he also shamefully testified against the righteous warrior and renaissance man Paul Robeson when America branded Robeson a disloyal Communist pariah in 1949. Later in life, Robinson spoke of how he regretted his stance against Robeson. He even eventually condemned America himself and wrote, “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world.” That was in 1972, 44 years before Colin Kaepernick began his descent into exile.

We rarely remember the fact that Rosa Parks and her husband were all but ruined after the Montgomery protests of 1955 and 1956 before Congressman John Conyers tossed her a lifeline years later. Shamefully, even Black Civil Rights organizations wouldn’t offer the poor woman employment. In 1960, Jet magazine described Parks as a “tattered rag of her former self — penniless, debt-ridden, ailing with stomach ulcers, and a throat tumor, compressed into two rooms with her husband and mother.”

Neither Malcolm X nor Martin Luther King, Jr. reached 40 years of age. Malcolm never had a great Black following because he belonged to the “wrong religion” and was ultimately shot dead by Black men. In King’s last days, he was at odds with other Black leaders who saw him as “too radical” on Vietnam and other issues as they took more conservative paths to appease the white establishment. At the time of his death in 1968, polls showed a majority of Black people disapproved of King.

Black and brave

So many past and present stories remind us that to be Black and brave in America has social, physical and mental costs. Chris Wells is the latest to pay the price after contributing his tiny little bit to the ongoing Black humanization project. Like many others historically and contemporarily, he certainly had personal struggles that existed before the event that ignited overt Black resistance for a brief moment in Louisville. More importantly, he was simply unable to withstand the onslaught of physical, political, and psychic violence Black people endure daily in this land. It broke him. Many others suffer that fate with myriad manifestations.

There is no way to know how long people outside of his small circle will say, remember or even know Chris Wells’ name. All we can hope for is that people remember the hideous consequences of white supremacy are just as responsible for his death as the gun he used to commit suicide. Such has been the case for many poor souls across this country for years. And it will continue to if we don’t get serious about changing our current state of affairs.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is professor and chair of the Pan-African Studies department at the University of Louisville. His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Visit him at rickyljones.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ricky Jones: there is a cost to being Black and brave