‘It’s Been Setting in on Me That This Is Like a Cycle’
The events of 2020 carry painful resonances for black families, whose collective memories of violence reach back generations.
Roger Williams Jr. was 10 years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. It was 1968, and the assassination prompted chaos, uprisings, and fires across the country, including in his own Chicago neighborhood. “At the time, as a kid, you didn’t understand it,” Williams, now 62, told me.
More than 50 years later, “the faces have changed, but the policy is the same,” he said, referring to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis late last month. “I thought things would get better.”
Williams is one of the many, many black Americans for whom the events of 2020 carry painful resonances, whose collective family memories of previous violence against black people reach back generations. “This happened to Dad,
