Facing That Mess: When Police Murdered My Unarmed Dad
More than once, Mama said, “Get an education and forget about that mess.” So, in fourth grade, I was bussed across town to an accelerated Vanguard program due to high scores on a state exam. At Turner Elementary, I became the first Black flag girl in a predominantly Mexican American school. Mama was happy with these accomplishments because, usually, towards the end of the month when we were low on food, she’d say, “You girls have to do good in school, and not depend on no man. You never know what is going to happen.” I knew she was talking about the fact that white policemen had shot and killed our unarmed dad and left her with eight mouths to feed.
Although his murder had been in all the local newspapers in Texas, like Fort Worth’s Star Telegram and on news shows earlier that year, no one knew I was from that family at my new school in 1979. They didn’t know that Samuel Stewart II was my stepfather for six out of eight years of my life. There were over two dozen witnesses, so the police made sure that Mama settled out of court. The settlement, however, only covered funeral costs and attorney fees.
At Turner Elementary, I was able to bury my mind in books at the school’s library. I read any children’s books I could get my hands on from branch libraries I could walk to on Saturdays. Sometimes, I’d come across a book that mentioned a dog, and my mind would spiral out of my control and land on Reverend Chew’s sad and anger-filled voice at Daddy’s funeral. Although I couldn’t understand all that he said that day, when he mentioned how they “could shoot us dead like a dog in the street,” I knew he was talking about how the police killed Daddy. That’s when I had closed my eyes real tight and tried to hold my tears inside, but they had come flooding out anyway knowing that my dad’s body was in the closed casket before us.
For years, I tried to block out the murder, like Mama said. I wanted to forget about “that mess,” but the lack of food in the house once our church and everyone else moved on made it impossible. I learned a new word that a child should never know applies to her and her family — expendable. I was horrified to think that no one would get punished for killing us, and no one would care about our lives. My mind searched for a way out of this reality, so I began to distance myself from my feelings by reading book after book. I struggled, daily, to keep my thoughts and emotions inside. I became forgetful and sports became the only outlet I had for all my pent-up energy. At home, I was called the “absent-minded professor.”
In my effort to protect myself and to move forward, I had to push down all feelings. I imagined a brownish-gray ball of electrified emotions being pushed down past my belly, my thighs, my knees, my calves, and into my feet. Whenever I walked around on my tiptoes there was anger in every stubborn toe.
On Monday mornings, as one of Turner’s flag girls I’d have to participate in the flag raising ceremony. My job was to stand beside the pole while my partner held the U.S. flag in her hand, then we would click it onto the thick wire, hoist it into the air and let it flap freely in the wind in all its glory.
One Monday morning, I thought about the words to the Pledge of Allegiance to keep my mind busy and to not be distracted by kids filing out of the school to pay homage to our country’s primary symbol of freedom and fairness. Classes of students walked like rows of red fire ants crossing over grass and gravel toward an anthill, jittery and full of energy. With my arms at my side, as I had been instructed to keep them until we began, I pictured my right hand over my heart, like I had done many times before.
I had gone back to reciting the pledge in my head. It wasn’t until the end of the pledge that I realized I had to stop. I couldn’t allow the words “liberty and justice” to leave my lips. Daddy, who was cold under the dirt over at Cedar Hill Memorial Park, didn’t get any liberty or justice.
My eyes watered and my heart began to beat fast. The hot morning sun was making me sweat. My mouth felt full of dry cotton balls, and it suddenly felt like cold, lumpy oatmeal was lodged in my throat with no chance of escape. My calves started to harden like cement, and I knew my toes wanted to point.
I was a flag girl. I had to say the pledge. All eyes would be on me, and I didn’t want to let down my new teacher, who had chosen me for this “honor.” But I was so angry. I felt cheated and hurt. I felt like I had to hide my feelings because it would upset people at this school who knew nothing about my dad’s murder. How could I hide my anger during the pledge which was such a natural part of our school day? I would not be a traitor to Daddy. I couldn’t. My spirit would not allow it.
Finally, I knew what to do. I stood there, next to the pole, clicked the U.S. flag onto the metal latch attached to the wire, placed my hand over my heart and mouthed the words. I didn’t say anything. Air was my pledge. That day, I pledged allegiance to air, breath, memory, and Daddy.
Thirteen years later, at the age of 22, the not-guilty verdict of the Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King changed my life. I thought I was alright because I was doing well in my classes at Dartmouth and planned on graduating with a degree in Anthropology alongside my fellow ’92s. When the verdict based on the twenty-minute video of the Rodney King beating came out on April 29, 1992, I was horrified, but not surprised. Police brutality was nothing new to me, yet I still didn’t know how to respond to it.
Occasionally, leading up to the verdict I’d think that maybe this time would be different. Maybe, just maybe, our lives would be valued, and justice would be served instead of a lukewarm shrug and an “Oh well.”
In my gut, I knew that the people responsible for King’s beating would get around the law somehow. They always did. I had to acknowledge that systemic racism existed then just like when police murdered my dad.
Until the last term of my senior year of college, I never spoke about my dad to anyone. As a child, my mother told me not to think about “that mess” when his soft-spoken voice filtered into my eight year old mind while I played with my little brother, Tre, who looked so much like our dad. Mama told me God would handle it and to concentrate on achieving, like being the first person in our family to graduate from a four-year college. I told myself I was pleasing Mama and preparing myself for independence.
Then, although we only got PBS and NBC in the dorms, both television channels played the King videotape nonstop, as if to taunt me with memories of what police had done to Daddy. Images of my unarmed dad being gunned down by police kept playing repeatedly in my head.
My heart sank. Although I expected the acquittal, I really didn’t want to accept it. I groped for any hope at all that humanity would prove itself to be better than I thought.
I collapsed onto my twin bed and tried to think about something else. I awoke early the next morning, and the reality of the previous day’s verdict hit me. The acquittal of LAPD officers represented yet another bullet through my dad’s heart.
I tried to get out of bed, but my legs couldn’t hold me up. I fell onto the floor next to my bed and tears came streaming out. I had no control over myself. My whole body convulsed, and I passed out.
I remember raising my head from the floor and thinking Daddy was dead and that Black people were getting beaten and killed in the name of the law. Daddy was dead and I didn’t get to tell him that I loved him. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
Knots formed in my throat, my chest, and my stomach. I was terrified. I felt like the helpless eight year old who was confused and couldn’t find her way. I managed to put a stone on my little heart, compartmentalize my emotions and only deal with the ones I could maintain, the ones that were acceptable, like love and kindness. This time, though, my feelings of anger refused to subside, and take a back seat to workaholism, which consumed my time and my mind. I didn’t know how to manage the anger that was welling up inside me untamed, like a Texas tornado. I knew I had a right to this anger, and that I had a right to express it, but I didn’t know how.
I was afraid of my emotions, especially, my anger. Our society had no acceptable way of expressing anger, especially if the person is Black, a woman, or both.
Mama’s comfort and happiness had always been a priority over my own. How could I express my anger without alienating myself from her and others? How could I harbor feelings of rage and pain in my heart?
Slowly, and with deliberate intention to do what I must to graduate in a few weeks, I was able to make it to my sociology class that morning. However, I couldn’t understand what people were saying after Professor Deborah King, a short woman with an afro, mentioned the LAPD verdict at the beginning of class. Afterward, I went to her and asked if she could make sense of it.
She said, “No, I can’t.”
I found myself blurting out, “My father was murdered by police when I was eight years old.” I had never said those words out loud before. For the previous thirteen years, I stuffed all traces of my dad and my love for him into caring for abandoned elderly strangers in nursing homes because Mama said we had to find people who were worse off than us to help.
Professor King, and a couple of students who had gathered around after her class, didn’t say a word. They looked at me with such sadness and compassion that I had to look away. I reluctantly backed away and walked over to my dorm room. I felt so alone and confused. I tried to make sense of my existence. I couldn’t think clearly. I was in a daze.
Alone in my room, I cried for the loss of my father. I cried for my inability to change the state of the world. I hadn’t cried since his funeral, but at that moment it was all I could do.
I tried to get involved in rallies on The Green, which was a huge open space in the middle of campus where students held protests and demonstrated for various causes of the day, however, I was not mentally there. I learned to focus as a matter of survival, but now, I no longer had the ability to focus on anything or anyone other than how my dad was killed, as Reverend Chew had said at his funeral, “Like a dog in the street.”
On Monday morning, I called a counselor that I had been seeing at the student infirmary, Dick’s House, about my blooming attraction to women. I told her that I couldn’t recall the last time that I had eaten or slept. She recommended that I stay at the infirmary so I could rest and start eating again. I was medicated for clinical depression.
In our first session following the verdict, Dr. Arroyo asked, “Are you going to call your mother?”
“I don’t want to call her.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t care about what I’m going through. She only cares about when I’ll be graduating.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She wants to be able to brag about how her daughter graduated from college.” I stared at the doctor. “Fine. But she’s not going to be happy about this.”
When I spoke to Mama she said, “Why are you allowing yourself to think about your Daddy? Let it go. Let it go, child.” I could hear the disappointment in her pleading voice.
“It’s already too late, Mama.”
She couldn’t understand. Her goal had always been to protect me from this pain. But here I was, willing to feel the pain and, finally, release its hold over me. I must be able to feel all my feelings to allow love to come into my life.
“I finally found enough courage to allow myself to think about him and how he was killed.”
“Why won’t you just let it go? Oh Lord.”
“I can’t Mama. I need your help,” I said. “I need you to send me a copy of the newspaper clippings about his death. I know you keep them in the file cabinet in your bedroom closet.”
“No. I can’t do that. Don’t let your mind get caught up in that mess.”
Here we go again, I thought, just like when I was a child. “Mama? Are you going to help me or not?”
“You should be concerned with your studies and forget about that mess. God will take care of it.”
I said, “God has given us the ability to take care of it ourselves.” Although she never spoke of our dad, I would sometimes hear her crying at night when she thought we were all asleep. She was trying to protect herself from her own pain and loss. She worked so hard to keep a roof over our heads. I knew I had to go on this quest for peace alone.
Upon my counselor’s suggestion, I began writing poetry again. I allowed myself to connect with the pain and grief. I even wrote him a letter in which I thanked him for stepping in when I was a toddler and making our house a home after my parents split up. I got to tell him how he gave me faith in humanity because of his kindness and unconditional love. I thanked him for loving a woman who already had seven children and had escaped an abusive husband. I thanked him for treating us as though we were his very own, as evidenced by his attention, time, understanding and for cheering us on at our Little League games and ballet recitals. Time spent with him gave me the most wonderful memories of my childhood. I let him know that he was the best father a child could dream of having, and that I missed him and his calm, patient voice.
Writing those things helped me a lot, but they were not enough. I still felt so much rage.
As luck would have it, a women’s self-defense class I was taking on campus had become a saving grace for me. I told Dr. Arroyo about it in sessions prior to my stay at Dick’s House. She let me go to the last class.
I hadn’t told any of the women in the class about what had happened since we last saw each other. We were a bunch of strangers who signed up to learn how to defend ourselves. However, something special and unexpected occurred in the first class. Cindy, the instructor, had us raise our hands if we’d ever been attacked or harmed in any way, whether by a stranger, an acquaintance or someone we knew and trusted.
I felt flustered and ashamed. A softball-sized knot formed in the pit of my stomach. My tongue felt like a lead ball in my mouth. Other than my childhood best friend, I had never told anyone I had been attacked by a white plumber at my home while I was in middle school.
I looked around before I raised my hand. About two-thirds of us had been assaulted. This new honesty made me feel safer. This shared experience made me vow never to miss any of the sessions, especially the last one.
When I got to the gym for class, I immediately noticed two white men. One was tall and lean with light, brownish hair. The other was stocky and had dark brown hair.
“This is Steve,” Cindy said. She pointed to the tall man. “He’s my husband. And this is Mike. They are local police officers who are here to simulate attacks so you can practice using what you’ve learned.”
I stared at the men in disbelief. Policemen? I wondered what kind of trickery was happening.
Cindy picked up a black, protective face mask like the kind hockey goalies wear, and a thick black body suit that was lying on the mat next to her and held them up to us. “The whole point is not to hold back. Remember the options you’ve learned and drilled for regarding confronting frontal attacks, side attacks, and those surprising rear attacks.”
There was no way I was going to go first. I watched the men step into their body suits, which covered their torsos and latched underneath their bodies between their legs.
A couple of women volunteered to go first. They were both hesitant in their movements, which never gained the necessary momentum to fight off a fly, much less actual human attackers. They were unsure of themselves when the moment came to make substantial physical contact, and they both ended up slapping at the men weak-wristed with flaccid limbs flailing in the air. It was obvious they couldn’t bring themselves to become violent with men who meant to be violent with them. One of them, red-faced and sweaty, broke down in the middle of the simulated attack and cried, “I can’t.” Another woman in the class, I assumed was her friend, rushed to put her arms around the upset woman and ushered her to the side of the gym.
We had been taught that it was dangerous to only half-defend ourselves. It could make the attackers angrier and even more violent.
“Remember, you’ve got to think and act quickly. Your life may depend on it,” said Mike.
“You’ve go to follow all the way through. Any other volunteers?” Steve asked.
He and Mike looked at each of us women sitting on the mat. No one raised a hand. I squirmed and bit my lower lip. Should I go next?
“You’re all going to get a chance eventually. Any takers?” Mike smiled.
I got up from my safe spot on the mat and wondered if they’d attack me from the front or back, one at a time or gang up on me. I took a deep breath and prayed to God for help.
First Mike attacked me from the front. Then out the corner of my eye, I caught Steve approaching me from the back. My mind, which hadn’t been working too well, finally kicked into gear. Like we were taught, I screamed, “Fire! Fire!”
I tripped the frontal attacker, Mike, and I flipped Steve over my back. When Mike got up, he came at me again, so I punched him on his face mask and kicked him in his groin with all of my might. Steve got a lot of jabs to his face mask and throat. I used the palm of my left hand to ram up Steve’s nose. The men seemed to be moving in slow motion. Maybe the suits were slowing them down. This seemed too easy.
The women yelled, “Yeah! Get him!”
I kept hitting and kicking them on their body suits and face masks. As I defended myself, they became the police like the ones who killed my dad, the ones who harassed my brothers, and the ones who beat Rodney King. I also thought of them as the plumber who had attacked me. While I was beating on them, the women continued to cheer.
All my rage surfaced, and I released it instead of holding it inward and turning it onto myself. I simply did everything we were taught to do, but I felt bad getting praised for beating on anyone. I had felt so beaten down for most of my life that I had doubts about beating others, even when defending myself. Who had taught me that my life was less valuable than my attackers’ lives?
After time was called, the men sat down and took off their masks. Their faces were crimson, and their sweaty hair was matted down to their heads like shiny paste. Mike had a bruised eye. Their breathing was labored as they dropped their face masks to the floor.
The women and instructor applauded my response to the attacks.
My own breathing was heavy and my muscled arms hurt. I was physically exhausted, but my adrenaline was pumped up so much that I was shaking out. Sweat dampened my t-shirt and gray sweat bottoms. My braids were itchy from perspiration. The knuckles on my right hand ached.
I felt that I should apologize for hurting them, but I didn’t want to. I had to protect myself. That’s what this exercise was all about. They knew what they were getting into when they took on this volunteer gig.
“Are you okay?” I asked Mike. I automatically added, “I’m sorry. I feel really bad for doing that to you.”
With a cheesy grin on his face, he said, “No, no you were great!”
If I were so great, then why did I feel so bad? I shrugged and walked away to find a seat on the mat. The other women and Cindy stood around me. Cindy put her hand on my arm. She squatted down to look deep into my eyes until I shied away. “Deirdre, you were fantastic. You are going to be safe now.”
Keeping my eyes downcast, I nodded, wondering if I would ever be safe from this pain. Was it safe for me to cry? I waited for class to resume with silent tears rolling down my cheeks.
Back in Dick’s House, reality was beginning to set in again. I was getting concerned about my classes. My professors knew that I’d be in the infirmary for a few days, but I had to catch up on my work if I expected to graduate in June as planned.
I was able to sleep and to eat more and was released. A week or two after I went back to my dorm I felt like myself again. I resorted back to blocking out my feelings and concentrating on my schoolwork to get through the last few weeks of college. I finished with grades ranging from B+ to A-.
While at Dick’s House, I realized I had to start living my life for myself, and not for Mama. I learned that I could feel my feelings and be okay. Most importantly, I felt as though I had begun the process to finally say goodbye to my dad.
On April 20, 2021, like much of the country, I once again found myself holding my breath, after watching a trial unfold that involved another video of police using excessive force against an unarmed Black man. This time, I was hoping that Derek Chauvin would be found guilty of murdering George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota. My heart ached for all of Mr. Floyd’s people. I prayed for the well-being of his children, especially, Gianna Floyd, who was six years old at the time of her father’s murder. A part of me died in 1979. I prayed that beautiful Gianna, her older sister, and her older brothers remain whole. Knowing that years of grief and anguish await them haunts me.
I’m left wondering if I’m doing enough to stop this cycle of abuse of power from happening in the first place. As a teacher in California, I have sponsored a racial and social justice group at school, joined my union’s Racial Justice Committee, got involved in Black Lives Matter, and taken students to meet Rep. John Lewis and other Freedom Fighters in the South. As a result, the club members had two successful voter registration drives on campus before the 2016 election. I always talked to my students about what happened with my family regarding my dad’s murder, and they share their fears and experiences with the class about how police brutality has impacted them and their loved ones.
As a result of my activism, I got called to the principal’s office on many occasions. Evidently, he was more concerned with having the words, “dismantling white supremacy” said over the loudspeaker than he was worried about the effects of white supremacy in our society. Other out-of-classroom people did everything in their power not to populate my Ethnic Studies courses, such as African American Literature, Mexican American Literature, and the Literature of Minorities in America. Every year, I had to get parents involved to be sure their children were enrolled in these district-offered classes that reflect their worth and values.
The illusion of the U.S.’s greatness died when I was eight. Years of costly, but healing psychotherapy as an adult, self-help books addressing grief and loss, and endless hours spent meditating and writing have helped me on this journey to fortify my spirit to build emotional confidence and to live a full life.
Every time I speak my dad’s name, whether it is in my classroom with teens or at a BLM meeting with allies, it is a tremendous risk. I could be judged, ridiculed, or pitied. However, I have learned that it is a greater risk not to speak up because it has shaped who I am today. It forces me to take up space in a society that does not care for Blackness. I think on what my ancestors had to endure to make sure I arrived in this world, and that gives me strength to be the answer to their prayers.
For the first time, my family began to talk about our dad after Mr. Floyd’s murder came to light on social media in 2020. I’m no longer the “radical” outlier of my family on a solo healing journey. I had to understand that my dad was more than how he died and at the same time know that it’s okay to out myself as an adult child of someone who was unjustly killed by police. Even Mama said remembering our dad is helping her to heal.
