Watch 'Queen & Slim' Director Melina Matsoukas's Powerful Tribute to Atatiana Jefferson
Early Saturday morning, 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson's neighbor noticed the door to her home was open and called the Fort Worth Police Department nonemergency line to request a welfare check. According to Jefferson's lawyers, she was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew when authorities arrived.
Body camera footage released by the police department reportedly showed officer Aaron Dean standing in Jefferson's backyard with a flashlight and a gun. "Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” he yelled at her through her bedroom window, before firing a fatal shot through the glass. Jefferson died on the scene; the entire interaction lasted just three seconds.
Dean abruptly resigned from the force on Monday after failing to cooperate in its investigation. He was arrested and charged with murder. Though specifics about the case vary, the shooting is just one more example of a white policeman killing a black civilian, and again raises questions about racial dynamics in local policing practices.
At Monday evening's ELLE 2019 Women in Hollywood event, Queen & Slim director Melina Matsoukas delivered a powerful speech about Jefferson's case. “I was up late last night trying to write my speech, trying to show my appreciation for the opportunities and the love and support I’ve been given,” Matsoukas said. “Trying to use my breath and my voice to create change and inspire on this stage today, but all I could think of were those whose breath was taken from us. All I could think of were my sisters who are not here, who could no longer speak, love, or thrive solely because of their existence as black woman.”
Melina Matsoumas delivers the night’s most powerful speech. #ELLEWIH pic.twitter.com/4s7VnKsokM
— Marc Malkin (@marcmalkin) October 15, 2019
"[Jefferson] was killed in her own bedroom, which is meant to be a safe haven for a person," Matsoukas continued, "she was murdered by someone meant to protect and to serve her. She was murdered because she was black."
The director also spoke about 28-year-old black activist Sandra Bland, who was found hanging in her jail cell in Waller County, Texas, in 2015 after she was arrested during a traffic stop. "We stand here to honor all the black and brown bodies whose lives were taken by law enforcement," Matsoukas said, "[it] could have easily been me or Lena [Waithe, a Queen & Slim writer] or Jodie [Turner-Smith, Queen & Smith star] or Indya [Moore, a presenter at the Women in Hollywood awards]. To shed light on this epidemic, as Lena appropriately calls it, ‘to give these lives justice and carry their legacy,’ because that is the reason we create art, to create change. We create art to create change, to illuminate and to disrupt.”
After Matsoukas finished speaking, Waithe took over the mic to say: “We must tell our stories and not just to educate white audiences, but to speak directly to those who have been ignored, to those who have been silenced, to those who have been taken far too soon. When the hunter tells the story, the lion will always be conquered.”
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