Planting A Legacy for Za’layia
Episode #079
“Each year we want [the garden] just to grow, and grow and grow.... Her little body can’t grow anymore so this is her body, and I want people to realize that. This is her...
“It’s really been very sad for me to kind of see that history. But love having conversations about it because it informs us as to how we got to where we are. We don't know who we are unless we look over our shoulder and see where we came from.” Reggie Jackson
A bulletin board in a Milwaukee middle school bears the city’s 2015 homicide statistics. 152 murder victims although a handful of those cases were later considered to be self-defense homicides. Photos of some of the victims accompany the statistics. They are all black. One educator has an explanation for this. And uses the board to spark conversation with students: about how present day gun deaths relate to centuries of oppression.
Reggie Jackson, who teaches at Universal Academy for the College Bound, with a wall outside his classroom dedicated to young African American students who lost their lives to gun violence in the past year.
Credit: Michael Sears, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
