NC NAACP On The Ahmaud Arbery Shooting: ‘Lives of African Americans Don’t Seem To Amount To Much’

By Billy Ball

May 7, 2020

The 25-year-old Black man’s killing by two white men has prompted outrage in Georgia and beyond.

“Lives of African Americans and people of color don’t seem to amount to much in these United States of America,” Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the NC NAACP, told Cardinal & Pine Thursday, two days after horrendous footage of Ahmaud Arbery’s death went public.

Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was shot and killed in a south Georgia community while jogging, reportedly when two men, both of them white, believed he was connected to recent burglaries. The shooting’s prompted a wave of outrage in Georgia and across the US.

A grand jury will decide whether the two men, a father and son, one of them a former police officer, will face charges, but many are livid that no one has been charged in the 10 weeks since the shooting.

Spearman makes the case that Arbery’s shooting is not an isolated event. He draws a line from Emmett Till to Keith Lamont Scott to Ahmaud Arbery, nothing that Black men, particularly Black Southerners, have been falsely accused of crimes and targeted for violence many times over.

North Carolina is well acquainted with such unrest. Indeed, in 2016, protesters converged on Charlotte after the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by police.

Watch below for the full video of Cardinal & Pine’s interview with Rev. Spearman.

Author

Billy Ball

Billy Ball is Cardinal & Pine's senior newsletter editor. He’s covered local, state, and national politics, government, education, criminal justice, the environment, and immigration in North Carolina for almost two decades. His reporting and commentary have earned state, regional, and national awards. He's also the founder of The Living South, a journalism project about the most interesting people in the American South.

Have a story tip? Reach Billy at [email protected]. For local reporting that connects the dots, from policy to people, sign up for Billy’s newsletter.

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