Out of respect we go.

They shoot the white girl first. They shot her because she was friends with and illegally helped the blacks. She even helped heal their wounds from where they were beaten by their slave owners. They shot her first to show the other white people how bad it is to be that way, nice and friendly and caring, towards the blacks. They also shot some of the blacks that were wrongly accused of stealing stuff from their slave owners’ homes. It was a sad sight to see, especially when you know that they were innocent. And to see their families so sad, it is hard to see. My momma makes us go to the shootings to pay our respects to the black people. I don’t like seeing it. I wish she wouldn’t make me and my baby brother go.

She says that when she was younger that her family had slaves. One of the lady slaves practically raised her.  This slave later died of old age, but was so good to my momma that she was like a mother to her. This lady, Nina, had a husband and a couple of kids. Her husband was accused of taking something as worthless as a spoon. A week after he was wrongly accused he was shot. Mamma went with Nina to the shooting as a thing of respect for Nina’s husband. Nina often went out of respect to the shootings and often took my momma. As Nina was a mom to my mom, my mom was a daughter to Nina, and that’s how she treated her.

So even though she doesn’t like seeing them die and winces every time the gun goes off, she still has us go. We go out of respect because they are humans too. They don’t deserve the kind of treatment that they get. They deserve better.

They deserve our respect.