Very thoughtful essay: "Ahmaud Arbery Holds Us Accountable"

[Alex4Martinez]

Ahmaud Arbery Holds Us Accountable
by Jim Barger, Jr.

Nobody belonged to the salt marshes of coastal Georgia more than Ahmaud Arbery. His family’s roots there run more than 200 years deep. A native of those same marshes writes about who Ahmaud was, how well he was loved, and what his community must reckon with in the wake of his murder.

On Sunday morning February 23, 2020, I walked into darkness to the creek behind my home to watch the daybreak, new in all its glory. It’s a habit of mine. The sun rose in streaks of color over the vast spartina marshes somewhere beyond the distant waves, lapping the shores of this barrier island deep in the recess of the Georgia bight where I was raised, where my wife was raised, where her people have been raised for generations as far back as folks can remember — where together we are raising our two young sons. The tide was coming in at that golden hour, creeping across the fecund mud flats, sending fiddler crabs scurrying for cover. By the time Ahmaud Arbery had been murdered on a mainland street that afternoon at the southern end of our county, the tide had fallen again. Our dramatic tidal changes are shocking to those who aren’t accustomed to them. The murky saline water ebbs and flows, rising and falling, pulsing with the ancient rhythms of the moon.

Ahmaud Arbery was from here. He descended from one of the oldest families in coastal Georgia, one of the oldest families in America for that matter. I know his relatives, personally, and I know their history. As we say in the South, “I know his people.”

More: https://bittersoutherner.com/2020/ahmaud-arbery-holds-us-accountable

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