Columbus Alarmed By Black Murders

As founder of the Columbus Black History Museum, Johnnie Warner noticed a disturbing trend in the Black community, reports the AP. “… Prior to the end of the Civil Rights Movement, there were so many lynchings and killings of the Black males by the whites,” he said. “And here we are now, we’re still living in fear – but because of us.” To address the issue, Warner launched a “Cain and Abel” memorial project in 2016 to denounce Black-on-Black crime in the community. He started by collecting the name of every local Black person killed by someone of its race from January 2013 to December 2015. The list has 57 names. But it doesn’t include those killed among the 26 homicides of 2016, or the 26 homicides that the Columbus Police Department has already recorded for 2017. Muscogee Coroner Buddy Bryan puts the number at 32, because he does not differentiate between a homicide that police consider a murder and one they categorize as manslaughter or a justifiable shooting. Many of the victims included in those numbers are young Black males allegedly killed by their peers. Of the 26 homicides recorded by police so far in 2017, 21 were Black males, three were Black females, one was a Hispanic male and one was a Caucasian female, according to Mayor Teresa Tomlinson. Warner recently posted a message on Facebook in the wake of recent killings, asking people to add the names of others who have died since 2015. And he posed the question: “Am I my brother’s killer?”