Metro By Rich McKay 10/18/2021
Community leaders in Brunswick, Georgia, are preaching unity ahead of the trial of three white men accused of racially motivated murder in the shotgun death of a Black jogger, anxious it does not stir racial tensions or violent protests in their small coastal city.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Monday for a trial expected to draw hundreds of protesters outside the court building. The killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020, sparked outrage across the country.
“After the trial is over and the bus-loads of demonstrators and media leave, we still have to live here. We still have to live with each other,” said Allen Booker, who represents Brunswick as the only Black Glynn County commissioner.
Former police officer, Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, are charged with murder and other crimes. All have pleaded not guilty. They face life in prison if convicted.
Community leaders are proud that Brunswick, population 16,000, was once dubbed a “Model City” for the collaboration by local Black and white leaders to desegregate schools, grocery stores, bowling alleys and other facilities even as racial conflict gripped other southern cities in the 1960s and 1970s.
But the issue of race is likely to be at the forefront of the trial. Prosecutors have alleged that Arbery’s death was racially motivated.
Arbery’s case, together with the high-profile killings of George Floyd and other African-Americans in 2020 at the hands of law enforcement helped fuel months of nationwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the United States.
The McMichaels and Bryan say they suspected Arbery was a burglar and chased him in pickup trucks as he ran through a suburban neighborhood. Cellphone video shot by Bryan shows Arbery first tried to run away and then grappled with Travis McMichael, who was armed with a shotgun and shot him dead.
Defense attorneys will argue during the trial that McMichael fired in self defense, but civil rights activists and Arbery’s family say it was another example of a targeted attack on a Black man.
More:
https://www.metro.us/keep-calm-a-georgia/
