Artifact

I teach an elective in cultural anthropology, but mostly I facilitate the discussion and my brilliant students lead me.

Today we were talking about the power of artifacts as a means of telling how people lived in a certain time. I asked, Tell me you were born in a particular decade without telling me you were born in a particular decade. Then I showed them my Paula Abdul cassette tapes.

We discussed how so many of our artifacts are now digitized and easily disseminated.

I then shared this digital artifact with the class in my Zoom screen:

photo courtesy Ben Crump Law Firm

I didn't share how I came across the picture; I offered it without preface of who and where and what. I simply asked the class how they felt when they saw it.

Peaceful, one student said.

Warm, another said.

A student who is a mother of two said, "That little boy is knocked out. He's living his best life. He's in the bosom place--it's the best."

We took a couple of beats to acknowledge how many of us knew this feeling, the mother and child bond, the safety of surrender.

Then I shared that this digital artifact, this picture, was used this very week in a court of law to tell a jury about how people lived.

Who is this little boy? I asked.

Oh.

Oh it’s George Floyd, they responded. It's George Floyd as a little boy resting in his mother's lap. The same mother, a woman some years deceased, whose name he cried out during his final moments.

That went from 0 to 100 fast, said one student.

Damn, said another student.

Why do we need artifacts to remind juries of people's humanity? Why do we need to see proof positive that we all come into the world defenseless? Why have the arbiters of justice and brokers of power in America so long subverted the humanity and equality of Black Lives?

Artist Titus Kaphar used this picture of a young George Floyd with his mother as inspiration for his cover of TIME Magazine. Kaphar wrote, “ I see the black mothers who are unseen, and rendered helpless in this fury against their babies. As I listlessly wade through another cycle of violence against black people, I paint a black mother … eyes closed, furrowed brow, holding the contour of her loss.”

"It's weird," said one student. "When you first showed us the picture, I felt all warm and now I just feel gut-punched."

It's my hope, though, that the jury members will hold this picture in their hearts, hold it close in their bosom place.