Almost every morning I walk through some nearby trails in a beautiful forest. The trails are extensive, and I readily get “lost” - although “lost” isn’t quite the right word! I follow the guidance of Spirit, who tells me what way to go, through what feels like an instinctual pulse in my gut. The feeling says “Go this way”.
A couple of weeks ago, I came to a usual crossroads where four ways meet, and was about to go my preferred route which takes me deeper into the forest where more unknown choices emerge, when the voice was clear “No, go that way”. On June 16th, 1944, 76 years ago today, 14-year old George Stinney was executed by the electric chair following a 2-hour trial that found him, an African American boy, guilty of murdering two young white girls in South Carolina. His court-assigned lawyer offered no defence, and the all-white jury pronounced him guilty after 10 minutes of deliberation. In 2014 a judicial review overturned his conviction when a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial.
This is a horrific and heartbreaking story, but it is just one of hundreds, no…thousands, of stories of the incredible injustice that people of colour have lived (and died) through in so-called “modern” history. |