David Carlson: Fighting against a moral universe

The lawyer defending the three men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery turned to the people sitting in the courtroom and saw something dangerous.

No, he didn’t see anyone who threatened him with violence or disturbance. He saw two figures that scared him more than that. He saw two black ministers.

Ahmaud Arbery was the 25-year-old black man jogging in a predominantly white neighborhood in Georgia when three white men decided to interpret his presence as a crime. Pursuing Ahmaud in two pickup trucks, the men shot and killed him.

Prosecutors believe the three men would likely have gotten away with a murder, citing self-defense, if one of the men hadn’t filmed the murder on his cell phone.

Was the recording and broadcast of the murder mere stupidity on the part of the killers? No, it was arrogance. The three men did not make up this scenario, with a group of white men chasing and killing a single black man. The execution and execution of black men and women has continued since the days of slavery, but the crime continued throughout Reconstruction, the Jim Crow and civil rights era , and until today. So few of these murders have resulted in convictions that it would be laughable if it weren’t so horrific. The men who killed Ahmaud knew this.

Even with the damning video, the killers believed they could be acquitted by claiming they were making a “citizen arrest,” and then, when Ahmaud resisted, they could claim self-defense.

But then Kevin Gough, one of the defense attorneys, looked around the courtroom one day and spotted Reverend Al Sharpton and Reverend Jesse Jackson sitting with the Arbery family. He asked the judge to demand the departure of the two ministers, saying their presence was “intimidating”.

If the three murderers repeated the action of their white predecessors, the ministers also repeated the action of their predecessors, the black ministers. The only institution we could count on to speak out for justice in the face of injustice and racism, to hold the community united against all the forces that wanted to tear it apart, to rebuild the burnt places of worship and to lead the fight because the racial equality is the Black Church.

This is what Kevin Gough instinctively understood when he saw the two ministers sitting with the family. He wasn’t afraid Reverend Sharpton or Reverend Jackson would stand up and cause a scene. He feared that they would sit as silent witnesses, gazing steadily at the accused, the lawyers, the judge and the jury.

Martin Luther King said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it leans toward righteousness.” In every era of American history, from slavery to the present day, the Black Church has been on the right side, on the side of justice. I challenge anyone to name a cause that the Black Church has embraced throughout American history and that our society ultimately did not see as the right choice, the moral choice to be made.

That’s what was so intimidating about the two ministers sitting with the Arbery family. When the two ministers entered this courtroom, the moral compass of our country entered the hall. The defense attorney knew at the time that he was not just competing with the prosecutor. He was fighting against a moral universe which leans towards justice.