As the Wicked Watch(42)
“Father God, we ask you to bless this family. Bless this mother and father, who have lost a daughter. Bless Masey’s little brother, who has lost a loving sister. And bless this community, oh Lord, so that we may go on even as we live in fear and frustration. Lord, we have suffered an unimaginable loss. Tonight we come together as a community to grieve and for a little grace, oh Lord. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”
Once they reassembled, I started the interview. “Thank you all for taking the time to speak to me. Tonight I suspect we will learn just how deeply the community has been impacted by this stunning tragedy. What are you hearing?”
Each one had their own agenda. Pastor Charles Bowman used this time to try and solidify his reelection to the state senate by promising to fight for more resources in communities of color. Louise stood on her soapbox about the neglected park and blamed city hall and the Park District for the disrepair of the neighborhood, which attracted crime and malfeasance. As they were speaking, Pamela dropped and shook her head. I recognized her movements as a sign that she was about to blow any second.
Thankfully, her church pastor, Reverend Clement Harper, spoke up next. “When my sister in Christ, Pam Alonzo, called and told me her daughter didn’t come home one night, and that the police said she had probably run away and they wouldn’t do anything about it for two days,” he said, holding up two fingers for emphasis, “I knew then that they were wrong. Masey was an excellent student. She loved the Lord. She loved her church and she was excited about her future. If they’d known her like we knew her, they would’ve known she wasn’t no runaway. They were wrong not for a day, not for three days, but for three weeks!” His voice rose. “Stop misrepresenting our youth! Stop misrepresenting Black mothers and fathers! Listen to the parents! We know our own children! Look at the facts, CPD! She didn’t fit the profile of a runaway, period!”
The next voice, surprisingly, was Pam’s. “The police wasted precious time,” she said. “Precious time they could’ve been searching for my daughter. Outside of relatives and my church family, the only person who would listen to me was you, Jordan,” she said, looking me dead in my eyes. “That’s the only hope I had until all hope was lost.”
That was too much even for me. My fissure cracked, and the tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t care enough to try and stop them. Pamela, too. Louise put her arm around her, and the pastors formed a chain, laying hands on her shoulders.
The camera continued to roll. Pam regained her composure. “Yes, the police were wrong,” she said. “But I don’t have time to be mad at the police. I’m saying to the police right now, in this moment, I need you. I need you to find the man who did this. I cannot rest, I will not rest, until you do.”
8
I’m at the corner of 45th and Calumet Avenue in Bronzeville, where the body of fifteen-year-old Carol Crest High School honor student Masey James was found underneath these “L” train tracks three days ago. Tonight, more than 150 people gathered near the crime scene to remember Masey and to show support for her family, which includes her mother, Pamela, and Masey’s father, Anthony James.
When I was starting out, my mentor, a seasoned veteran at the Dallas station, gave me some sage advice: “Walk and talk; no one wants to see you just standing there.” Recalling this, I asked George to follow me with the camera and do just that to record the teaser—walk with me as I talked the audience and our anchors in the studio through this sorrowful night. At the conclusion of a nearly twelve-hour day, I would see my hard work distilled down to mere minutes on the air. But that’s the irony of this business: long days are chopped up into short pieces and sound bites. No wonder people feel their stories aren’t fully expressed. And for what? To set aside enough time to show a funny video at the end of the broadcast to counterbalance the bad news they just heard? Precisely.
But I needed to get as much information as I could to these anchors in the studio.
Will and Iris, I spoke with one woman who told me that people are furious with the way Chicago police dealt with Masey’s disappearance, classifying her as a runaway for weeks. This simmer of anger is going to turn into a boil if police don’t provide some answers soon. More in my full report later tonight.
It was still light outside. The vigil was set for seven o’clock, but no one really expected it to start on time, given the large numbers of people straggling in on foot. I noted that very few of the people gathering were coming out of nearby homes. This was the time of day when the setting sun exposed the underbelly of a neighborhood in transition, when people were accustomed to retreating indoors for the night. Seniors abandoned their porches and parents called the little kids inside. Then when the streetlights flickered on, the middle schoolers picked up the pace, recognizing they are nowhere near equipped to deal with the kind of stuff that can potentially transpire once night creeps in, so they made their way home.
I thought to myself, No one wants to be here. They’ve come because they’ve been affected by the fact that a Black child has been murdered and discarded in a field, and because they are worried something like this could happen to their child. They are tired of the constant violence in their communities and the absence of empathy for Black and brown victims—to a certain extent, even among their own people. They weren’t eager to stand in a dark street, because even on a night like this and even with a heavy police presence, you could feel a shift in the energy level as the texture and beat of the community, sadly, tilted toward what the media so often portrayed as violence. In a place such as Bronzeville, whose enchantment as a Black mecca had vanished decades earlier and which was now in the midst of regentrification, the daylight concealed the inherent dangers and the nighttime revealed the vulnerabilities that many equated with being on a street corner ruled by people it might not be safe to be around. Tonight, if just this once, they were willing to take the risk, because the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, had happened to one of their own.