Learnings from Emmett Till and now Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry
Ball Hawk (Ahmad Hawkins, UVA football 1997-2000) said it perfectly today – Rest Easy Young Kings.
And I hope just as Lavel said, he will make a lasting impact on the University and society. He thought it would be through the Groundskeepers brotherhood, yet I think he will be part of a much bigger story that changes policy and education in our country. That is my hope.
“When I leave here, I just want to say, I was a part of the change, and I took a step forward, changing everything in the right direction. Whatever I can do, even if it’s a small percentage to bring awareness to all the injustice our school has been through, just to shine a light on it and change it in the right direction. It’s a blessing to be a part of it.”
Chilling to read, angering to read, motivating to read. All the things he won't get to do, yet all the things he can push us to do. We need to take a step in his honor, in his name. Ensure Lavel leaves a greater lasting impact than he could have ever imagined.
I’m struggling right now, not the usual struggles in my own head and my mental challenges, but struggling because I don’t know what I can do to drive such needed change, what I can do to help those who need to heal from a tragedy at UVA. What I can say or do, what I can think, feeling helpless and paralyzed and so sorry for my brothers at UVA football, for students who will be scarred forever by a horrible trauma, by families who will never see just how far their beautiful sons could go and the things they will do. Their potential extinguished, their light gone, our only hope is that their lives can help shine a light on issues and areas of focus to drive change.
What I know I can do is write, it heals me and helps me. Gives me new perspective and fruitful education when doing research. That’s for me, but I also write for others – that is a hope I have - maybe a few eyes will find knowledge or solace in these words. But I am also sad, in the same way I get sad about the overarching cloud that I’m fighting a losing battle with my mental issues, that I will never be victorious. I’m sad because I don’t have faith in our society to change, just as when I look into the mirror some days. But we must march onward, we can never lose hope, we can never lose our resolve – we must succeed and only together can we advance. Wishful thinking but it can be so much more.
If I could be granted three wishes:
1. Chris Jones didn’t have a gun Sunday night on that bus pulling back into Charlottesville and on Monday morning we are talking about 3 UVA football players being suspended for their role in a scuffle. They will be disciplined internally and will miss the game this Saturday against Coastal Carolina for the fight they were involved in. But there was no gun involved and as such things couldn’t escalate to matters of life and death before the altercation was squashed. Maybe the biggest news we are talking about is that Lavel or D’Sean or Devin hurt their hand or sprained an ankle in the scrum.
2. That we would hold the UVA vs VA Tech football game in Charlottesville in 2 weeks on December 3rd to properly honor our fallen players and their families while uniting as one family to move forward and grieve together. To also rally our cause to drive change, for we must find a positive and drive change in their names, to honor them in the only way we can now. The game is just one small portion of the overall coming together on that day which will help in so many ways a community, university, team and program, and families who are gutted right now. We need each other to march forward, we must march forward together. I don't believe this is a timing coincidence, for both schools now know tragedy on campus from gun violence.
3. (a. and b.) That we realize change is long overdue and we connect the dots, do something different this time after the funerals and vigils, once the bridges are painted over and the sheets washed or discarded, the flowers dry out and are blown away by the cold fall winds. That we drive policy to change how guns are controlled in the US as well as structural change in our educational system with respect to mental health. I hope others will see a level of historical repetition in the shadows of this event and seize the moment - that we won’t continue down our current path. We are more than capable of change, to emerge stronger in the future because of this event. But only if we drive policy and change that will prevent similar events like this in the future – words and emotion alone will not do it. End our attitude of disregard on these issues, we must open our eyes and ears, our minds wider.
I wish Chris Jones saw his potential role in some ways like that of Roy Bryant and had an ah-ha moment, made a different decision and caused no harm and carnage, all based on the play he saw that same day: The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza, directed by Talvin Wilks.
Ok, so the first wish cannot be granted. Everyone will miss the game this Saturday and we will ALL miss Lavel, Devin and D’Sean forever on this earth. Three great young men with limitless potential. The second wish, likely represents too many logistical challenges to execute, but we cannot lose hope – it is possible. The third wish, is it too big, we will never eat those 2 elephants, impossible to say it could come true? Let's take a bite and see anyways. Probably so, but perhaps we can move the needle, or better yet – we will and we must, even though the road to success will be long and bumpy. Well let’s dive into that one more and see if we can connect the dots and pull this together – because I see connectivity that truly resonates.
I don’t know how to properly put into words just yet how the tragic shooting of 3 UVA football players on Sunday night in Charlottesville has hit me. I attended the University of Virginia, graduating some 21 years ago, my wife also graduated from UVA so we are 100% a Hoo family from Hooville. Our rally cry is WahooWa all the way. I also was a walk-on member of the UVA football program as a placekicker, so I know exactly what its like to be a part of that program, a part of that family whereas many others may not beyond what you see on the David A. Harrison field at Carl Smith Center on 6 fall Saturdays each year. Maybe you go to the spring game and read a bit about the players, watch a practice or two if you are a die-hard fan, but still there is so much more to being a member of the UVA football family than you know. The things I remember most vividly, the things that have stayed with me and impacted who I am from my time there have nothing to do with field goals, touchdowns, penalty flags, wins, losses or really much at all that happened on any football field. Team sports are a significant teacher for our youth, and at the college level that education is on a different level and is a big factor in making you who you are as an adult. Losing one (not to mention 3 with a 4th injured seriously) of my brothers and at the hand of another past member of the team is unthinkable. While team sports are a teacher, we are missing other lessons to augment our education, but we will get to that a bit later.
I haven’t been in a good state of mind, haven’t been able to do what I am supposed to be doing for the last 3 days very well. My mind has wandered more than ever, thinking about so many things – how the families are doing of which I cannot begin to grasp, Mike Hollins in the hospital going through multiple surgeries, Ryan Lynch (a student on the bus) who gave a courageous interview to ABC yesterday that brought me to tears. Coach Elliott – there is no chapter in the book of coaching for handling something like this, when he said that on Monday I felt for him. Carla Williams our Athletic Director who focused on her/our players and protecting them, ensuring they are together to grieve, was beautiful and painful. How so many UVA administrators, politicians and law enforcement are feeling when they look in the mirror and ask the question of what we could have done differently. Did they do enough to investigate the weapons charges and potential for Jones to be carrying a weapon on grounds, obviously not?
Then the source of all this trauma, 22-year-old Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. in a cell, incarcerated, in tan scrubs, what is going through his mind right now, what was going through his mind and what he had experienced for the last 4 years since he arrived on campus in 2018. He is a monster today, but what led to this. There must be so much more than anger issues, coming up from a tough childhood as has been reported on. There is something about a hazing event, was Chris a hazer or a hazee?, and investigation into having a firearm thought to be due to repeatedly being bullied – what is that chapter of the story telling us, what happened there? So many things we are yet to learn.
Ryan Lynch said of Jones on the bus immediately before the shooting “Chris got up and pushed Lavel. After he pushed him, he said ‘You guys are always messing with me.’ [just before shooting Lavel, after the day-long field trip from C’Ville to Washington DC, the play they watched in DC, where Jones sat alone, didn’t speak to any of the victims on the entire trip, and the return bus ride that concluded with the murders as the bus pulled back into campus at Culbreth Rd.]
Ryan thought Chris would shoot all of them on the bus. She said time slowed down and there was smoke in the bus from all the gunfire, that her ears rang. She told Lavel as he laid in the aisle of the bus that they would do anything they could to help him, that he needed to hold on. She looked into his eyes while his pulse weakened. She saw her friend who had been shot in his sleep and was dead. She saw the killer skip off the bus and into the ether. What a terrible vision, what a trauma that will stick with her for the rest of her life in more ways than she or we can imagine.
What about the professor who invited Chris on the trip to Washington D.C. (we learned today that Chris was not a part of the class that made the field trip to see the play, but made the trip with about 2 dozen other students), there are so many who are traumatized by this tragedy. And the impact will be felt in many ways and on many levels for years to come. We must support each other in times like this.
My mind has wandered to so many things, but getting back to that third wish now. I wondered how Chris could spend all day thinking about what he was going to do (if fully pre-meditated) or what could have been said to make him snap in the moment if this was just a reactionary fit of rage, anger and a lapse he would regret forever more. I also wondered, oddly curious, what was the play they were going to see in Washington D.C.? That hasn’t been mentioned or clearly published but I was able to piece it together based on Ryan’s interview where they mentioned Emmett Till as the subject of the play. Triangulating that with the location, I found the Mosaic Theatre Company on 1333 H Street NE and The Ballad of Emmett Till. And I thought, wonder what that is about, the name is familiar. And then I kind of stood beside myself after refreshing on his story. Irony, relationships, connectedness, how history is screaming at us to teach us, to change. Just as we are all connected and reside in a single system (my whole enlightened theory to survive and thrive from my own mental challenges with mind entropy and mental thermodynamics), there are connections here that I see, or at least hope will be seen and come to fruition in this tragedy.
Who was Emmett Till? Wikipedia and Google always know.
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryan, in her family’s grocery store. Till was born in and lived in Chicago but was visiting family in Drew, MS. Before the trip, Emmett’s mother explained in great detail that Chicago and Mississippi were two different worlds and Emmett assured her he understood. She knew her son was headed into danger, a complete 180 from parents sending their children off to the University of Virginia, a top-level institution of higher education. Especially those sending their children off to join the UVA football program where they will be cared after in many ways beyond that of a traditional university student. Well things didn’t work out for Emmett Till, his trip to Mississippi was worse than his mother could envision, and he suffered a tragic fate, posthumously becoming an unfortunate icon of the civil rights movement. Perhaps some of our lost youth will in a similar fashion become icons of change in gun laws and mental health education in the present day? Or perhaps we need something more shocking to happen in order to drive change, for countless unspeakable, indelible atrocities occurred prior to moving the needle in the civil rights arena here in the US. But that was 1955 and this is 2022…But then I thought back to the events of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in just 2017 and the genesis of the Groundskeepers that Lavel Davis Jr. was a part of at UVA – the brotherhood and mission of the UVA football team and coaches to drive racial and social change. The Memorial just unveiled in 2020 to honor the enslaved laborers who built the University of Virginia and Heather Heyer Way (she was killed in the 2017 white supremacist demonstrations). My mind racing again and all of it connected right up together in a perfect circle.
As the Till story goes, although details are certainly disputed, Till spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant and was accused of either whistling at, flirting with or touching Bryant and violating the unwritten code of the times for behavior of a black male in the Jim Crow-era South. A couple nights later Carolyn Bryant’s husband Roy Bryant and his brother abducted Till from his great-uncle’s house. There are many accounts of whether this occurred directly after Bryant was told of the interaction by his wife and Till in the store, or a few days later and also who in fact told him of the encounter (some believe Carolyn was afraid to tell her husband out of fear of what he might do, and he may have heard this second-hand which further angered Roy Bryant). No matter the case, what they did next is gruesome and horrific, beating and mutilating Till before shooting him in the head and sinking Till’s body in the Tallahatchie River only to be retrieved from the river a few days later. While Till thought nothing of skipping church with his cousin Curtis Jones to go down to the store and buy some candy, missing the sermon delivered by his great-uncle Mose' Wright, this proved to be a fatal decision. Till’s unrecognizable body showed significant disfigurement including a gunshot above his right ear, an eye dislodged from the socket and beating across much of his body. His wrists, skull and left femur were broken and Till was weighed down in the river by a fan blade attached with barbed wire around his neck. He could only be identified by a ring with the engraving “L.T.” and “May 25, 1943”
Till’s mother Mamie Till Bradley insisted on having a public funeral service with an open casket, held at the Robert’s Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago. Mamie insisted on an open casket so her son could be an example exposing the world to racism and the brutality of lynching in the US. Anyone who saw Till’s bloated and mutilated body would never be able to forget that image. What she must have felt seeing her son in that condition we can never know, never put into words. What the families of Lavel, D'Sean and Devin are feeling right now, where a place of security turned into a hell, we cannot know or put into words.
Till’s mother reacted upon seeing her son’s body in the funeral home as follows: "There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see."
Tens of thousands of people lined the street outside the mortuary to view Till's body, and days later thousands more attended his funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. Pictures published in many media outlets, shocking images, rallied black support and spotlighted the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi. A photograph of Till’s body in the casket was selected by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential images of all time.
More disturbing, an all-white jury found the two murderers not guilty of Till’s at trial, and because they could not be re-tried later (the double jeopardy rule), they later sold their story of torture and mutilation, murder of Emmett Till to Look magazine for $4,000. This further magnified the horrific murder and treatments of African Americans sparking the next phase of the civil rights movement. But the road has been a long and tortuous one, with the Emmitt Till Antilynching act, an American law which makes lynching a federal hate crime, only signed into law on March 29th of this year by President Joe Biden.
Writings of Till’s death, the funeral and graphic images sparked change. Can we spark change here coming out of this tragedy at UVA? One editorial in a local paper said the following in 1955:
"Now is the time for every citizen who loves the state of Mississippi to 'Stand up and be counted' before hoodlum white trash brings us to destruction." The letter said that Negroes were not the downfall of Mississippi society, but whites like those in White Citizens' Councils that condoned violence.”
And I can’t even go into the details of the case where the defense used horrible tactics including questioning if the body found in the river was in fact that of Till, that somehow Till’s mother was at fault and was profiting from a life insurance policy on her son. While not part of the case, later in 1955 information about Till’s father Louis (L.T.) came to light that further distorted the incident in Bryant’s family store which led to Emmett Till’s torture and murder. Louis Till, while serving in the US military in Italy, was court-marshalled for the rape of two women and murder of a third. The US Army found Louis Till guilty and he was executed by hanging near Pisa in July 1945. This information published shortly after the trial was used to foster the narrative that Till was abusive and acted inappropriately to Carolyn Bryant, which somehow justified his murder. This narrative was used for weeks across the South and further divided white and black, north and south and prevented even a kidnapping charge to fall on the murderers of Emmett Till. But we truly do not know if he was guilty, or if he received a far trial at that time?
Seeing no penalty for the crime of Till’s murder, sadly many in Mississippi felt more free than ever to follow on with similar crimes. The bar was set pretty low and what was acceptable is what we make it to be. For our leadership and the law, the courts and each one of us set the bar of what is acceptable – that is another horrible issue I see in our society, where people feel it is more ok than in recent years to foster hate, at least since 2000 from my view.
For almost a century African Americans were lynched with regularity and impunity, ignored by so many. And for years now, we have seen gun violence reach a threshold that more days than not, there is a mass shooting, yet we continue to ignore the root of the issues at their core. I believe there are two, a drastically different gun control standard and significant change in how we approach mental health education for our youth.
Another interesting point here, Bryant and his accomplice had little or no money to hire proper legal defense so supporters gathered $10,000 to pay for the defense. This was a large sum of money in 1955 and shows just how far people will go to defend their beliefs no matter how wrong they are. But we have to overcome those resources of evil, make breakthroughs beyond their defenses.
Today, gun lobbies spend approximately $15-20 million annually (that we can account for), then there’s roughly 10X that amount in other spending to support political candidates and legislation by those protecting the right to bear arms or gun manufacturers.
Emmett Till’s death was an atrocity, and unfortunately it takes such acts to drive change. In this case, the Civil Rights movement and I hope in the case of Jones murder of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry we will enact change on gun control and mental health education in our public schools. I would like to see this known as Act 15-1-41.
So gun control, we have to make changes there, and its relatively simple at least in my mind, compared to the much more complex part being the mental health aspect. For reading about Chris Jones, you see a boy who had anger inside him and often resorted to violence well before this event. We can also see that he may have been a victim which tells us others around him need help as well. For bullying and marginalizing others, happening more and more, is another symptom of our mental instability as adolescents. So I know we aren’t controlling guns properly but I ask a few questions now to determine if we are taking action in the mental health arena (who am I kidding I know we are not doing what we need to do here either).
Questions I have asked myself are the following:
How many physical education classes did I take in school from elementary, middle, through high school? Well, that was once a day every day for every year I was in school. That means I along with most students spent 3000 hours playing physical games and honing skills in sports and fitness to some degree while not attending to the higher-stakes games going on in my head, our heads. Not to mention all the time I was practicing or playing with actual sports teams before and after school and on weekends. For me its also more backwards because more of our overweight kids problem are derived from mental issues (or could be better controlled with stronger mental, emotional, psychological skills) than walking around a track 2 times talking about who is ugly and fat with your clique each day can ever do.
How many mental health, psychological or emotional education classes did I take? None, we only had one sex education class for a semester. So maybe we spend 100-200 hours on this topic.
How many hours of elective classes like wood shop, home economics, art, etc. did I take? Well, I love art so I know I took that at least for 5-6 years and then the others 1 or 2 times. Probably we are talking about another 1500 hours.
Did we ever truly talk about our feelings, emotions, how to communicate with each other, how to be good people? No way, but I did take 4 years of German. So we don’t master communication and expression in English but we move onto a foreign language investing 800-1000 hours in the classroom.
And nowadays I think a teacher would get vilified if trying to give any insights on these topics of mental health, psychology, emotional intelligence, managing our feelings to be functional and grow in healthy ways. Maybe there is meditation and yoga in PE classes now, who knows. But we can’t even see the iceberg to know what the tip is.
And guidance counselors, psychological support at schools, well that is not an adequate program at all – we had a single guidance counselor for a 1200 person high school I attended. That doesn’t do it – from a numbers standpoint she couldn’t possibly help anyone for more than 1 hour in their 4 years of high school. He or she may have had 40 minutes per student at best doing some quick math. Maybe some great psychologist can write this book: Understanding the adolescent mind and conquering our psyche to survive the world in 40 minutes.
I wonder what are UVA’s resources in terms of mental health? From recent upticks in suicides at colleges which have drawn some light in recent years we know that is another area of improvement. For example, Katie Meyer’s suicide at Stanford has driven some degree of change in that area bolstering resources, but I am certain we are nowhere near where we need to be in this regard. That is evidenced by us seeing such tragedies as this or suicides of athletes who tend to have the greatest support system of all our students. Other recent examples (suicides: Sarah Shulze University of Wisconsin cross-country, Arlana Milller Southern cheerleading, Lauren Bernett JMU softball, Jayden Hill Northern Michigan University track, Robert Martin Binghamton lacrosse; suicide survivor Harry Miller OSU football) and foundations started as a result show the significance of our issue, but also progress in taking a pragmatic approach at driving change (Hilinski's Hope, Morgan's Message, Katie's Save).
University mental health issues and suicides are on the rise, just as mass shootings are throughout the country, both pointing to greater mental instability. This is an entirely different line of thought but as you can see, its all connected. Murder and suicide are the most dire signs of trouble, the tips of icebergs, most of our children are suffering and in much worse position on the mental health continuum than we know. I feel I am a great example of this, but again another tangent for another day.
Back to my questions and the hours spent during my education and if they were properly spread: in those 4000 plus hours of ‘soft’ or ‘elective’ study we can surely carve out 500 hours let’s say to be devoted to mental health education in our schooling. That we can do and we have plenty of smart people who have spent their entire lives on these subjects that can provide a curriculum. Not difficult. We have to be committed to change – like the offseason program, study hall, film study, the training room, meals, everything you do for hours and days and weeks and months goes into success and winning at the critical moments.
Then we can each do a better job talking about these topics with our friends, family, children so that topics on the mental health spectrum are no longer taboo. Will we ever get tired of talking about mundane filler topics like the weather? Its on your phone.
So I am not sure now if this is at all coherent but I end with this – if Chris Jones Jr. didn’t have a gun, we would be in a much different place (wish 1, wish 3 part a). If UVA reacted differently to Chris Jones Jr. being a threat, being uncooperative, learning he was hazing or was hazed, was bullying or was bullied, may be unstable and could have sent him into proper support counseling and things of that nature, maybe just maybe we would be in a different place (wish 3b). If Chris Jones Jr. had an even stronger support system and mental health studies in his pre-college schooling we might be in a different place (wish 3b). If those who may have been bullying or hazing Chris Jones Jr. had that same stronger support system and mental health studies in their pre-college schooling, we also might be in a different place (wish 3b). There are many what-ifs and never-to-be-known Whys in every situation, but what I do know is we need to do things differently in order to get to a different place in the future. And it will take all of us moving small grains of sand, pebble, rocks, boulders, mountains and such to win the game.
What was it back in the day John 3:16 or something you would see at football games?
I would like to see us adopt Act 15-1-41 to drive change on gun control and mental health in our public education system. I would like to see that sign flying and all of us rallying together at the UVA vs Virginia Tech football game played in Charlottesville on Saturday December 3rd (wish 2). Honoring Lavel, D'Sean and Devin. We are all Groundskeepers who can set a new standard and drive change.
For me the mental picture of Lavel, D’Sean and Devin losing their lives on that bus at UVA is as horrible as that of Emmett Till in that open casket.