I met with Helen Brown and her mom in 2019 at the start of her senior year at Carver High. The plan was to follow her through the end of high school and write a profile about this young woman being the first in her family to graduate. On that day, her strength, drive and maturity were already evident.
The first in my family to graduate, I worked all through high school to make sure I'd go on to be the first in my family to get a college degree too. I knew all about the sacrifices Brown had already made, and I worried about the pain she'd endure during the future ones.
The more I learned about Brown, and the more she went through, I settled on the fact that I have not witnessed in another person the level of strength that she possesses. Even when she looked like she might be losing it, even when she talked about losing it, it was clear that she wouldn't.
Brown's story shifted when her boyfriend was shot and killed one month after she and I met. Like so many other young Montgomery men, he lost his life much too soon, and Helen joined a club no one wants to belong to. She still went on to become the first in her family to graduate high school, but her story wasn't just about being a first generation student. It was about what the resilience and determination it takes in Montgomery, coming from an impoverished neighborhood with few resources or role models and marred by violence to become a first generation graduate — an endeavor drastically different than what I experienced in Iowa.
For this series, I interviewed more than 40 people. For the past several months, in between attending school board meetings and writing about the district's accreditation status, audits and intervention updates, I sat in the homes of mothers who lost their children and listened to their favorite memories. I attended a candlelight vigil for James McGhee Jr., and a few days later I saw a level of grief at his funeral I'd never experienced. I listened as the families of these young children described the devastation their murders have caused. I watched as they struggled to find words and faded in and out of conversations.
I listened as I was told repeatedly by young people that they felt hopeless, that life couldn't ever be better for them.
I learned that my assumptions on what this grief would look like were often very wrong. I imagined outbursts and panic attacks and chaos, but found often that grief can be silent and some people who appear to be perfectly fine, are crumbling on the inside.
Personally, I went from breaking down to feeling desensitized, to not wanting to go have fun on my off-days, feeling guilty for enjoying life in a way they wouldn't. I found myself sitting at my desk, staring off into space as I tried to get myself to do something, but couldn't even decide on what I wanted to do. Initially, I talked to my friends about it, but even with an amazing support system I started to hold my tongue. I felt I was placing a burden on them that they did not ask for, and I felt I was beginning to sound like a broken record. There were countless times where I participated in conversations, smiling when I was supposed to, laughing when it made sense, waiting patiently for there to be some sort of opening for me to talk about what was really going on in my head.
None of my friends or family members has been murdered, but from hearing these stories, I started to struggle in similar ways. My mom is the one person I didn't spare from sharing this pain with, and there is no one more thankful I've finished this project than her. I called her so many times after these interviews, like the time I left Chauncey Blackburn's family and bawled while explaining just how cool he seemed. I cried so many times over not getting the chance to meet these children, then I cried again as I felt I didn't have a right to hurt so much considering how much more these families were hurting.
I am an education reporter and when I came to this city two years ago, I never thought I'd be writing a massive group of stories about community violence. I didn't think I'd cover a school shooting or add names to spreadsheets that track homicides for the year. I eventually realized, though, that a conversation about test scores and academic achievement cannot be had without acknowledging what psychological scars these children are bringing with them to school every day.
I write about my own pain, as a grown adult, just to hammer home the fact that what I've struggled with is scant compared to the pain some of this community's young people carry. I am a 26-year-old with a career that provides me with access to mental health services, with loving friends, family and co-workers, and still, I don't know how to process all of this. I couldn't imagine trying to process this at a younger age or without such a strong foundation.
It is irresponsible to think that children, many of whom lack resources, should be able to.
There are 19 children included in this project, each killed violently before reaching age 19. Some knew each other, and there are children going to school every day who knew multiple kids on the list of deaths.
As mentioned in the series, it is a list that doesn't include any of their parents, cousins, aunts, uncles or neighbors who may have died violent deaths. It doesn't touch on the trauma of sudden losses to illness or accidents.
The list doesn't include Willie Lawhorne Jr., 17, who died in a house fire or 10-year-old Jamari Williams who died by suicide. It doesn't include Jamari Smith, who drowned days before he was going to walk across the graduation stage. It doesn't include the name of Rod Scott, a loss that Smith lived with through his whole high school career. It doesn't include the name of Amendo McKee, 18, who was shot to death just a couple of days after he congratulated his two friends for graduating. He was supposed to be there in a cap and gown too, he wrote, but, "the streets put me on the wrong path." He wasn't included in this project, with his death just days out of the established timeframe, but the fact that his smile can only be seen in pictures now undoubtedly still pains many of Montgomery's young people.
The list barely scratches the surface of the havoc some Montgomery neighborhoods are and have been experiencing.
When looking at these 19, understand that these children came from varying backgrounds, lived widely different lives and yet, still met the same fate. Being poor or being in the streets is a blanketed statement some will try to make as a defense guided by a desire not to feel the weight of this statistic.
It is ignorant to try and live by such a false sense of security.
For those who want to say some of these kids put themselves in harms way, I challenge you to ask what led them there and how we as a community can change that. Their losses have impacted several generations of people throughout this city and an honest conversation about how deep that trauma is, and in how many facets of life it will manifest itself, needs to be had.
How did we get here? How can we change?
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Krista Johnson at kjohnson3@gannett.com.
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Opinion: We can't talk achievement without acknowledging our kids' environment - Montgomery Advertiser
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