By Robin Givhan / The Washington Post
The mother of Ahmaud Arbery was fully prepared to stand before the public Tuesday morning to share her thoughts after a federal jury found that the three white men who had killed her son had done so because he was Black. Wanda Cooper-Jones was gracious. She was pointed. She refused to give in to the bromides of a victory speech.
Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan had each been found guilty of a hate crime after only a few hours of deliberation. Cooper-Jones had sat through the trial. She’d shed tears as the prosecutors detailed the racist and dehumanizing language the men had repeatedly used in reference to Black people. She’d heard the n-word spoken in its full, breathtaking horror as prosecutors read aloud the defendants’ text messages and social media posts. Finally, the truth of what Cooper-Jones seemed to have known all along, ever since her son was killed in February 2020 in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of coastal Georgia, was stated plainly by a jury of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person.
The killers were racists; racism clouded their judgment; they acted because of her son’s race.
When Cooper-Jones emerged from the courtroom, she was with her son’s father Marcus Arbery, as well as activist lawyer Ben Crump. He regularly ushers cases involving deadly violence and racial injustice into the spotlight. He’s adept at creating evocative set pieces as a form of public testimony. He is the stage director making sure that all the players have time at the microphone and their names are spelled correctly in the media. He knows which names to mention in his verbal acknowledgments. Crump is part of a heartbreaking tradition: the activists who help families tell painful stories through gestures and rhetoric.
When Arbery’s parents stepped in front of the microphones and cameras, Crump was there with them to thrust their joined hands into the air in the universal sign of victory that is most favored by politicians. It’s a stance that always looks profoundly awkward and uncomfortable as suit jackets bunch at the shoulders, dresses get hoisted into odd positions and the shortest person in the group looks like they’re about to get yanked off their feet. And yet, it’s an irresistible stance because it delivers an unmistakable visual message.
Cooper-Jones looked startled when Crump flung her arm high. She began her remarks with an expression of gratitude to friends and strangers alike for their support. She was also thankful that the U.S. Department of Justice had “brought these charges of hate crime,” she said. But she was not prepared to celebrate the DOJ. She did not declare it courageous or admirable. She refused to be an agreeable chorus after Crump sang the praises of Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke and noted that she was the first Black woman to lead the justice department’s civil rights division. Clarke, after all, had not been fighting, arguing and agitating for a trial on the hate crime charges. Cooper-Jones had.
She was the disconsolate mother. She was the believer in God’s unflinching might. She was the unabashedly determined, stubborn and angry Black woman. Cooper-Jones epitomized all that is beautiful and wondrous in that phrase. Despite the effort society has expended trying to transform that trope into something ugly and hateful, there is no greater salvation than to rest under the protective wing of someone who loves you fiercely and relentlessly, who is enraged by your pain and who will fight your battles when you no longer can.
Cooper-Jones took all of that righteous and indomitable rage and focused it with searing precision at the levers of power; all in the pursuit of justice for her beloved.
“What the DOJ did today, they were made to do today,” Cooper-Jones said as she stood outside the courthouse. Her hair was swept atop her head like a crown and her eyes were shielded by sunglasses. Her lapis blue dress was a stand-in for armor. Her high-necked sheath was lady justice’s new look. It was a secular raiment for a voice of moral authority. She was surrounded by supporters who periodically shouted their encouragement and agreement as if they were in the midst of a redemptive revival.
The government had not wanted to go to trial. Successfully prosecuting a violent hate crime requires clearing a notoriously high bar. It demands crawling into the mind of the accused and sussing out the demons hiding there and then proving that those dark thoughts drove grave actions. The federal government’s lawyers had accepted a plea deal from the defendants, who had already been sentenced to life for Arbery’s murder in a state trial. The agreement would have allowed them to serve much of their time behind bars in a more hospitable federal institution instead of a grim state-run one. Cooper-Jones viewed such an accommodation as an insult to her family and a failure of the justice system. The government, Cooper-Jones said, ignored the family’s pleas to reject that plea deal.
The government failed to heed her cries, after a judge threw out the agreement, the case went to trial. With her refusal to give in, Cooper-Jones forced this country to see itself more fully.
“I cannot imagine the pain that a mother feels,” began Attorney General Merrick Garland, as he took questions following the verdict. He paused for several beats, looking down and shaking his head before continuing. “To have her son run down and then gunned down while taking a jog on a public street. My heart goes out to her and to the family.”
When the prosecution detailed how the defendants repeatedly denigrated Black people in their social media, in casual conversations and in agitated rants, the nastiness was vivid and free-floating. There was no way to take the edge off the words by couching them as good ol’ boy jokes or politically incorrect misunderstandings or locker room talk. All that racist vulgarity was piled up right next to Arbery’s lifeless body in the middle of the road.
The verdict confirmed that no matter how often we tell ourselves that we are not an intolerant, prejudiced, racist society; sometimes we are. The evidence is right there if only we’re willing to see it. Twelve citizens saw the connection between words and deeds. They understood that you can’t compartmentalize racism; it’s corrosive and eats through whatever walls or levees one might put up. Cooper-Jones forced the country to see itself more clearly; if only briefly. We’ve gotten another glimpse of the rot.
The country can finally see what Cooper-Jones has always known. And the country should share her outrage.
Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts. A 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, Givhan has also worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press. Follow her on Twitter @RobinGivhan.
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