Stop Hustling Black Death

Samaria Rice is the mother of Tamir, not a “mother of the movement.”

- By Imani Perry. Photograph by Rahim Fortune

In her memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody describes her experience at the 1963 March on Washington. It is not the glorious image to which we have become accustomed. “I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers, to discover we had ‘dreamers’ instead of leaders leading us,” she writes. She was a 23-year-old activist in the Black belt at the time. “Just about every one of them stood up there dreaming. Martin Luther King went on and on talking about his dream. I sat there thinking that in Canton, Mississippi, we never had time to sleep, much less dream.”

Like Moody, Samaria Rice is not inclined to speak in pious ways about a national movement for Black lives. She too is sharptongued, if somewhat more profane. Over two hours one May afternoon—elegantly coiffed with swooping bangs, maroon lipstick, and a silk dress—she told me the story of how she had been cast into the center of the movement at the most tragic moment of her life.