This is only a fraction of the issues the world is facing. This is not to say that Muslim’s are only facing hardship, I am simply trying to raise awareness about these specific countries. This post doesn’t cover all of it. Our brothers and sisters in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Albania, Kurdistan and so many more are still suffering. ⁣These are beautiful countries that are masked by war and famine.

All I hope from each of you is that you learn something new each day. If you’re reading this right now it is likely you come from a place of privilege. Use that privilege to educate yourself and stay informed on the issues this world is facing today. ⁣

In a series of interviews, the author spoke to Tamika Palmer to paint a picture of a full, loving life taken too soon.

BY TA-NEHISI COATES PHOTOGRAPHY BY LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER

Shortly after midnight March 13, strangers shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home. The strangers claimed to be investigating a drug case. The strangers found no drugs in Breonna Taylor’s home. The strangers left their incident report almost totally blank.

Tamika Palmer is Breonna Taylor’s mother. What follows is her attempt to illuminate the life that was taken. To grapple with the nature of strangers. To fill in the blanks.

Kenny calls me in the middle of the night. He says, Somebody kicked in the door and shot Breonna. I am dead asleep. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I jump up. I get ready, and I rush over to her house. When I get there, the street’s just flooded with police—it’s a million of them. And there’s an officer at the end of the road, and I tell her who I am and that I need to get through there because something had happened to my daughter. She tells me I need to go to the hospital because there was two ambulances that came through, and the first took the officer and the second took whoever else was hurt. Of course I go down to the hospital, and I tell them why I am there. The lady looks up Breonna and doesn’t see her and says, Well, I don’t think she’s here yet. I wait for about almost two hours. The lady says, Well, ma’am, we don’t have any recollection of this person being on the way.

Breonna Taylor’s Mother, Tamika Palmer, and Sister, Juniyah Palmer, Standing at the Banister Where Breonna Once Stood, Near the Front Steps of Her Apartment on Springfield Drive in Louisville, Kentucky.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

So I go back to the apartment. And I am able to get through the street a little more. And when I get up to the apartment, it’s still taped off and roped up around. So I tell the officer there that I need to get in the apartment, that something is going on with my daughter. He tells me to hang tight. He tells me hang tight, he’ll get a detective over there to talk to me. It takes a little while for him to come. He introduces himself. I don’t remember what his name actually is, but he kind of just goes on to ask me if I knew anybody who would want to hurt Breonna, or Kenny, or if I thought they were involved in anything. And I go, Absolutely not. Both of them got jobs. They go to work. They hang out with each other. That’s about it. I ask where Kenny is, and the detective tells me, Hold on. I’ll be back.

But it’s about another hour or so before he comes back. He asks me if Breonna and Kenny had been having any problems or anything. I say, Absolutely not. Kenny would never do anything to Breonna. And then I say, Where’s Kenny. I need to talk to Kenny. He says, Well, Kenny’s at one of our offices. He’s trying to help us piece together what happened here tonight. We are out there for a number of hours afterward. It’s kind of chilly. I leave. I get coffee and come back. I’m still standing out there waiting. It’s about 11 in the morning when the officer comes over and says that they are about done and they are wrapping up, and we will be able to get in there once they are finished. I say, Where’s Breonna, why won’t anybody say where Breonna is? He says, Well, ma’am, she’s still in the apartment. And I know what that means.

I’m from Michigan. I spent a lot of time in Detroit. But I grew up mostly in Grand Rapids. There was always stuff happening up there with the police. I was always hearing about them harassing black people or just always something. When I was about 13, I was outside one day with some friends. And the police just came up out of nowhere and started yelling. It was a gang of us, boys and girls, but they wasn’t talking to any of us, the girls. They were just kind of screaming at all the boys, Get on the ground! Get your stupid asses on the ground! And so we all were like, What are you doing! We didn’t even do anything! But there’d be stuff like that every day.

I remember being in the car, driving down a street, and being told if the police are behind us, don’t turn around and look at them. And if we did get pulled over, don’t say anything. Don’t move, because they’ll try and do something to us. I remember just kind of being told to stay away from the police, like you don’t want to have no problems with the police or give them a reason to want to have a problem with you. And I don’t really remember people ever calling the police. I remember people not wanting to call the police. I remember stuff happening and somebody would be like, Call the police, and people were like, Fuck the police. They not helping us. I just kind of steered clear of them. I tried not to be in trouble. I got the occasional speeding ticket or something. But for the most part, I never really had to deal with them a lot. I stayed out of their way. When I came to Louisville, it was the same thing.

KENNY CALLS ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. HE SAYS, SOMEBODY KICKED IN THE DOOR AND SHOT BREONNA.

My mother was born in Alabama. My grandmother died when my mother was 13. She was shuffled around through family. And then, she finally ended up in Grand Rapids with her aunt and uncle when she was in, I want to say, high school. Yes, it was high school. I do know that. My mother took care of everybody. I can remember probably almost everybody in our family living with us at different times. Or even when they didn’t, everybody dropped their kids off at my mother’s house—cousins and everything. It would at least be six of us at all times, but sometimes it was more. So it was always a houseful. My mother had two sons. And she took in her husband’s kids and adopted some kids. And so, I had sisters from that.

Breonna Taylor’s Boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, Holding the Engagement Ring He Was About to Propose With to Bre, Louisville, Kentucky.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

My mother cooked all the time. We’re all pretty good cooks because of her. We always, whenever there was anything going on, we all had a part to play in cooking and whatever we had to do in the kitchen. My part? Just depended. Holiday-wise, I was in charge of whatever was going on with the dressing. I had to dice up the onions and celery and green peppers and mix it all up and season it. To be honest, I always remember cooking. I don’t really remember when I started, because whenever my mother was in the kitchen, she had me in there doing something with her. We did chores. We would clean up. We had to. My mother worked hard—she was a nurse’s aide. But she was sick a lot. I think she had her first stroke or heart attack, she was like 33 years old.

Iwas a popular kid at school. I don’t know how I became popular or why I was that person. Because it wasn’t like I was into sports or doing anything like that. But all my life, even to this day, people kind of flocked to me. I don’t know what that is or was. I learned to double Dutch at school. I started when I was around 10 or 12. I had to get my coordination right. But you get popped with that rope a couple times, then you get it together. You gotta watch the rope. You gotta watch the side where you’re trying to jump in. When that side of the rope goes back down, that’s when you want to try and get in. You need a superlong rope. You gotta learn to turn. You can’t be double-handed because then you’re going to mess up the flow and such when somebody’s jumping and then they going to go off on you because double Dutch is serious. It’s a serious thing, and so if you double-handed, somebody’s going off on you. Double-handed? Well there’s a rhythm to turning the rope right, so if you don’t got this rhythm, they call it double-handed, and it makes it hard for people to get in there and get their rhythm, and so then they got a problem with you. I’m pretty good. I ain’t doing no flips or nothing, but I can switch up my footwork a little bit, but I ain’t flipping and all of that. Double Dutch is serious. There would be double Dutch teams, so people would be teaching you all of this. Even later with Breonna, anything we did, we was playing double Dutch.

For whatever reason, my mother told me that my dad was dead. I asked my mother a lot about how he passed away, about who he was, Do I look like him? and Did he pass when I was a baby? I asked those types of questions, but she just wasn’t trying to answer. And so it was just one of those things like, Oh, I just didn’t have a dad. And I remember one night, when I was 12, I was at my aunt’s house and it was so weird. There was this guy and he kept staring at me, right? And I remember saying something to my mom about it because he just kept staring. And she was like, Oh, you’re fine. She just brushed it off. And so, later on in the evening, I remember being in the kitchen doing something. And so, the man who was staring came in there and I remember him talking to me a bit, just asking stuff about me. And then he asked me if I knew who he was. And I said, No. And so, then he told me that he was my dad and I said, No you’re not. My dad is dead. So yeah…. And he just stood there and my aunt, she was like, No. That’s your dad. We lived around the corner from her house, and I remember leaving and walking home by myself. But my aunt ended up driving around and getting me and making me come back.

Breonna Taylor’s Boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, Standing With His New Commemorative Dodge Challenger SRT, #BREEWAYY, Holding a Pair of Baby Jordan Shoes Given as a Gift for When He and Breonna Would Have Their Firstborn, Louisville, Kentucky.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

So I talked to him and he introduced me to his wife because she was there, and he said that he wanted to hang out with me some the next day if I would let him, and then we would just go from there. And so the next day I did hang out a little bit. He took me shopping and stuff. And so, then he asked me if I would be willing to come and visit him sometime. And I remember freezing. And he was like, Well, you don’t have to right away, but we’ll come and see you more first until you get comfortable to come. And it just went from there.

I liked Detroit. I started spending summers and breaks there, we would get spring break and winter breaks, and all that stuff. I liked it, but it was weird. It was never like I had to go or, Now, you’ve got a dad and you have to do this. But in the beginning it was just weird…. But then I started to look forward to it. And it became, Oh, I’m ready to be there. I was ready for my breaks to come. Sometimes it was just like…getting away from Grand Rapids. There was a big difference from being at my mom’s house and being at my dad’s house. It was less hood. In Grand Rapids, people mostly rent their homes. Where my Dad lived, everybody pretty much owned their homes. My dad worked for Chrysler until he retired.

I used to always tell my daughters, Breonna and Juniyah, how lucky they were. See I didn’t grow up where we were being told how college was important or that you needed to be doing these things to have a career. But I always would stay on my girls. I have this thing I say to them all the time, If you don’t work, you don’t eat. Meaning, you want to be the best at whatever it is you want to be. If you want to be a hairdresser, be the hairdresser that owns the shop. I don’t care what it is. You want to just be the best at whatever it is. And so you will have to go to school, you will have to learn things about yourself and your business and whatever it is you want to do in life. But when I look back, nobody ever said those things to us. I learned them later from being around my dad and them. Because my sisters both, they went to college, and I watched. There were certain things I never wanted for my girls. I never wanted them to feel distanced from me. I always felt like I had to take care of them. So I was just ready to work and do whatever I needed to do to make sure that, like, we wasn’t a family moving around all the time. Like, I just didn’t want them to have to see the things that I saw or feel the way that I felt coming up.

I got my first job when I was like 15. Babysitting. Well, I always babysat a little bit, even up before 15. Like my mother’s friends, you know? We would babysit their kids. But then, I actually went out and got my own babysitting job for this family who had these three little boys. And so, that was my thing. And then, I did that all the way up until I had a baby. I had my own money. It was great. What did I do with the money? Shoes. I have a freaking shoe problem. And my kids have a freaking shoe problem. I remember buying my first pair of Lottos on my own. I thought I was it! I was somebody. You couldn’t tell me nothing. Sometimes we would catch the bus out to the mall to get shoes. Or we had a guy we knew, a neighborhood guy. He had a store—Timmy D’s. And he was not far from the hood. We would all gang up together, and walk up to Timmy D’s.

I USED TO ALWAYS TELL MY DAUGHTERS HOW LUCKY THEY WERE. I DIDN’T GROW UP BEING TOLD HOW COLLEGE WAS IMPORTANT. BUT I ALWAYS WOULD STAY ON MY GIRLS.

I met Breonna’s father at school. Me and his sister were best friends. Were we boyfriend and girlfriend? Hell no. My first time out the starting gate, I just got pregnant. Like literally. It was terrible, because from the moment I was 12, I had already decided in my life how I never wanted kids. 

Window Frame With a Bullet Hole and Bullet Trajectory Analysis at Breonna Taylor’s Apartment on Springfield Drive, Louisville, Kentucky.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

Two things I figured out by then—I never wanted to be in love and I never wanted kids. And so to find out, at 16, I was pregnant was like, What the hell? That can’t be right. But my mother kept saying I had this bad attitude or something. And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. She made me take a test. And so then I went to school, and then by the time I came home, she was like, Yeah. You know you’re pregnant, right? And I’m like, Oh, that’s impossible. My mother was shocked. I hung out with all the boys, but I was very tomboyish. I wasn’t, like, boy-crazy. I remember her asking me how I got pregnant. And I told her I didn’t know. And she was asking me who was I pregnant by. And I said I didn’t know. But my friend—Breonna’s father’s sister—told my mother. My older sister was sick at the time. And she wanted kids. And she couldn’t have kids. And so she just was like, You’ve got to have this baby. And I’ll help you take care of it. You can just give it to me. And I was like, I’m not giving you a baby. But we didn’t know how much longer she would be around. And so she kind of talked me into the whole you can do this thing. She passed two years after Breonna was born.

I ended up having an emergency C-section, because I had been in labor for like eighteen and a half hours. Breonna was stuck. It was this big ordeal. And so I had an emergency C-section, and apparently I was asleep forever. Then all of a sudden, I woke up. And they were like, Do you want to hold your baby? I’m like, What? But I remember holding her and thinking like, Oh…I’m responsible for her. And I got to do something different. And I remember thinking how people were waiting for me to screw this up. And I was like, No. I’m not screwing this one up. Yeah. I got this. But my whole world had changed. I had to figure life out. Because I think prior to that, I was an average, everyday kid. Didn’t have a care in the world. Hanging out with our friends, just kind of moseying on through life. I had no cares. And so here I am now with this kid, and it was like, You’re responsible for somebody else. And you got to do something different.

There were all the people I had to cut out because I didn’t want a lot of people around my kid, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t really lose any friends. But it changed how I dealt with my friends. I was the first in my group to have a kid, so I had to grow up a lot faster than they did. Breonna’s dad wasn’t really around. He was young and stupid himself. I graduated from high school and then I started working in a nursing home. I worked full-time and my mom would keep Breonna, so I didn’t have any problems with dealing with day care or stuff like that. I was a nurse aide, taking care of older people. It was nice but it would get sad, because they die. And some of these people you get really attached to and some of them don’t have family. So it would break your heart sometimes.

Breonna was a good baby. She wasn’t a crier. She was a happy baby. She started walking early—like at nine months, so she was just a little person early. I always say she had an old soul. She liked listening to the blues with my mother. She would sing me the blues. It was hilarious. She used to sing “Last Two Dollars.” That was her song. We always had these Christmas gatherings. Everybody would be at my dad’s. They would do karaoke. And one time my dad said to Breonna, What do you want to sing? And she said, I want to sing Johnnie Taylor, “Last Two Dollars.” Everybody just fell out, like Where did this little girl come from? And everyone was like, I got to see this. And they put this song on and gave her the mic and she was just going at it. And I was like, Oh my God! Everybody loved Breonna. Who wouldn’t love a baby? But literally she was everybody’s baby. She was close with my dad. My sister helped out. I remember we would get into arguments because it could be a holiday or something coming up. You want to go and get the baby an outfit and some shoes. She would beat me to the store. Like, I got her this. She’s wearing this. And I’m like, Dude! I got this. And she’s like, Nah. She’s wearing this. And blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But it was great.

My brother, Anthony, used to hang out with this motorcycle club. And I would say to him, Why are you hanging out with these dirty people? What are you doing? And he’d be like, Dude, it’s not even like that. So somehow I ended up hanging out with him one night and I realized, Oh my God, these people in these clubs, there’s police officers, there’s nurses, there’s all different types of people who just enjoy riding motorcycles. And then, I was like, Man, I’m going to get me a bike. I sure did get one—a Honda CBR. I was just nervous about riding, learning how to stop and go. It’s a process to learn how to hold the clutch in and give it enough gas, but then it’s like, Okay. It didn’t take me long at all. I’m in a club now called No Haterz. What do I like about it? The freedom. I don’t really care to ride from stop sign to stop sign. But when you’re able to get on a country road or on the highway and be just cruising, you really enjoy it.

Breonna Taylor’s Sister, Juniyah Palmer, Standing Between the Two Front Bedroom Windows of the Apartment Where the Louisville Metro Police Department Fired Over 20 Bullets on March 13th, 2020, Just After 12:30 a.m. on Springfield Drive, Louisville, Kentucky.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

I taught Breonna how to ride a motorcycle. The first major thing I taught her was to stop and go. You hear people tell you, If you can drive a stick, you can drive a motorcycle. That’s not a true statement. They’re two different things. I don’t know why people say that. But you do have a clutch, which is in your left hand. You’ve got to be able to let off this clutch and give the bike enough power to go without stalling it out. Breonna was a quick student. She was nervous though. She always worried about perfecting any and everything. But she had it. She dropped my bike a couple of times, though. We were in the parking lot. She couldn’t go too fast. I was trying to teach her how to turn around on the bike instead of just stopping and walking it back. But she stalled the bike out once like that and dropped it. She used to say, We’re going to buy us some new matching bikes, Mom. That was her thing.

What am I looking for in a bike? I want to know what type of cc’s it has. And I’m looking at its height, because most bikes are too tall for me, so I usually have the bike lowered so that my feet can be on the ground a little bit, or at least where I can control it. You can get all kinds of features—rims, custom paint jobs, lights that change while you’re riding. Music is a big thing. My bike was lowered and stretched out, so it has this extended swing arm on the back of it. It was built for racing. It has a 1,300-cc motor, one of the bigger motors that you can get on a bike, but then they did some motor work to it and made it even faster.

I first came down to Louisville on a ride with a bunch of friends. We came down from Grand Rapids for the Kentucky Derby. We spent the weekend here and the whole vibe was just different. And so then I told my friend I’m going to come back. So I ended up coming to visit her that next January. And I remember when I got here, I was like, Dude, where’s the snow? And she was like, Girl, it don’t snow like that here. Shoot, it snows here they’re going to shut the city down. I was like, What? I’ve got to live here. So I went home and told everybody I was moving to Kentucky. But everybody was like, Shut up, you ain’t going nowhere. I guess that’s what so many people say back home, Oh, I’m moving somewhere. And they ain’t going nowhere. But I was like, Yeah, okay. I’m telling you by March I’m gone.

I loved Louisville. The vibe was just different. The people were different. I’m from Grand Rapids–Detroit area, where everybody has an attitude. Everybody walks around with a chip on their shoulder. And here, it was like these random people saying good morning to you. And I’m like, What’s wrong with these people? Why do they keep talking to me? I don’t know these people! It was a big difference. But I loved it. There was always big events for the kids—concerts on the waterfront and stuff. Back home we didn’t have anything like that. And my kids loved it, and that was the most important part for me at the time, was that they were happy and that they would be okay here. And they were safe. Back home, I just kind of felt like history was always repeating itself, everybody was teenage moms, and it was corner boys and just whatever else. I would say definitely 75 percent of the boys I went to school with ended up in jail. I didn’t expose my kids to a whole lot of stuff. And not to say this toward anybody, but, like, they’ve never seen struggle. You know what I’m saying? Everything that I dealt with or was around when I was a child, my kids didn’t see that.

YOU ASKED ME WHETHER I KNEW SOMEONE WHO WANTED TO HURT MY DAUGHTER. BUT YOU DID IT.

Breonna was never really a troublesome kid. Only thing is, she would be fine all school year and then in the last few days she would somehow get in trouble with her mouth. I guess by the end of the year she probably had enough of people and so she would be snappy. But I didn’t have a lot of problems with her. She was very computer literate. I bought her first computer when she was seven years old and she just loved it. She loved to play double Dutch. And as she got older, she loved cars. Yeah, she’s a lot like me. I love older cars. Like a Cutlass and stuff like that. I love Thunderbirds, the old one with the bird on it. Breonna’s absolute favorite was the Dodge Charger. She was on her second one—a 2019 Dodge Charger R/T. She was so proud of this car, it was her baby. And she got these pipes on it. It’s got dual exhaust so you get the vroom! She had just bought this one. I’m in her car right now.

Kenny was a pretty decent kid too. He just was funny to hang around and he worked. His parents were married, so he had a pretty good upbringing himself. In the beginning, they were just friends. Even before they got into a relationship, Kenny would say, “I’m going to marry her.” I’d be like, “Be careful what you wish for, Kenny.” I want to say they were together about five years. They had talked about having a baby at some point. And she had just recently started saying, Yeah, I think I’m almost ready. I just want to get a house first and then go from there. Because that was the next thing. She got her Charger. And next was the house.

Breonna wanted to be a nurse. That was her thing. But her very first job she worked was Steak ’n Shake. She was 15 years old and she worked there for a few years all through school. And then she started working with older people herself. And she liked to drive, like I said before, so she drove this little bus that goes around and gets the older people and takes them places. She drove that for a while. And then she went to do EMT and she did that, but it was a lot. So then she went into the ER and worked as a tech and she absolutely loved it there. And so her goal was just to finish school with being in the ER and be a nurse.

Breonna Taylor’s Uncle, Aunt, Mother, Cousins and Family Friend, Tyrone Bell, Bianca Austin, Tamika Palmer, Austin Ellis, Jayden Grant and Deon Ellis Visiting the Breonna Taylor Memorial in Jefferson Square Park, Louisville, Kentucky. (Note: Austin Ellis Is Breonna’s Cousin and Jayden Grant Is Tamika’s Boyfriend’s Son.) June 30, 2020.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

I have so many stories. I think about how I had to tell Breonna how to make chili a hundred times, and she would still call me when she would go to the store. She worked third shift. So she gets off of work at 7 in the morning, and of course I’m at work by then, because I start work at 4, 4:30 in the morning, you know? And so Breonna would be in the grocery store at 7 in the morning, calling my phone, and it would be funny because this is what my coworkers will remember the most about her—they always talked about Breonna in the grocery store, calling me like, Mama, what do I need to buy for chili? Blah, blah, blah. And I would say Breonna, can you write this down, because I don’t understand why I got to tell you this all the time. And she would say, I don’t need to write it down, I can just call my mama. My coworkers would just laugh. But she’d just say, I need to talk to my mama. And I’m like, Girrrll…

Bossy. She was bossy. Breonna was bossy. She was so OCD. And she was one of them people who didn’t talk about other people. If something was going on with you, she’d rather figure out a way to help you than talk about you. She was a hard worker. If she missed work, something was really wrong. She loved being in the hospital, she loved her job, and she loved the people she worked with. Clearly, they loved her. They would always be leaving her little notes about them loving her and loving to work with her. Even when she passed, some of them came to the funeral. We just can’t believe this, we love her so much. We’re just going to miss her.

The first day, we are just all together crying and just trying to figure it out. I am just trying to replay this thing in my head. I am having these thoughts—Maybe it’s not Breonna, because I never see her, mind you. The police never let me see her. But I know it’s her house, you know what I’m saying? But just the fact that I physically haven’t seen her…. And then, I can’t talk to Kenny. But the last thing I know is Kenny called me and said, Somebody kicked that door in. And I’m thinking, Who would want to do that? What is happening? My head is all over the place. And the police aren’t talking to me or telling me anything. My daughter’s dead and they’re not telling me anything. And I keep wondering, Why would somebody do this? Until I actually learn on the news that the police did this.

It is probably the next day. Someone texts me and says, Did you see the news? Of course I didn’t see the news. I didn’t know nothing about it. I watch everything on my iPad. I google the news station and then I watch the story. And I am like, Why would they ask if somebody wanted to hurt her? Now I’m confused. Because you asked me whether I knew someone who wanted to hurt my daughter. But you did it. Why couldn’t you have just told me that the police did this? You asked me if somebody wanted to hurt “them.” And Kenny…you said you had Kenny over at the office trying to help you figure out what happened. But come to find out, you got Kenny down here trying to charge him with attempted murder. And Breonna’s gone. What the hell?

And I am telling you it kills my whole family. Breonna is like the family glue—even at 26 years old, she is pretty much the glue. And she is bossy. She don’t care what is happening, she is going to make sure we get together and have a game night or have a cookout or have something, because we all tend to get so busy and consumed with work and whatever. But she has a personal relationship with everybody, even all my little cousins. They don’t call each other cousins. They all call each other sisters and brothers. All the kids, the younger kids, or even the kids her age, looked up to Breonna. And my dad stops turning on the television. Breonna was his first granddaughter. To see what happened, to hear what happened, it breaks his heart and he can’t stand it. And Juniyah is depressed. She is just going through the motions. Because she’s used to seeing Breonna every day, and arguing with Breonna every other day.

Breonna Taylor’s Mother, Tamika Palmer, Draped in Bre’s EMT Jacket, Surrounded by Bre’s Cousin, Sister, and Aunt, Jakiyah Austin, Juniyah Palmer, and Bianca Austin, Surrounded by Close Family Friends, Deon Ellis, Jenna Winn, and Tylan Livingston, in Front of a Mural Dedicated to Breonna by Artist Damon Thompson at 543 South Shelby Street, Louisville, Kentucky.Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

The funeral home calls me when they get her body. The police never let me see her. They aren’t talking to me. It’s after midnight when I get the call. And they say I can come see her. Everybody is with me. My whole family—my four sisters, my dad, my daughter Juniyah, my sister’s boyfriend, my boyfriend, the kids, a couple of close friends. Nobody wants to be left out. And when we see her body, it’s just tears and screams. I walk out the home because everybody is just crying. And I am just so pissed off that she is lying there.

On the news they are saying it’s a drug raid gone bad. And it’s so common to hear these things—drug raid. Cops met with gunfire. One suspect dead. The other in custody. And that’s how they’re describing what happened with Breonna. Breonna and Kenny are drug dealers. That is how it’s being portrayed on the news. And I am pissed off because I know how hard Breonna worked. I know that Breonna ain’t about that life. Breonna couldn’t tell you where to buy a dime bag of weed. She isn’t that person on the news. Neither is Kenny. So somebody has to do something. Somebody has to help me. Somebody has to…. Look, I’m a person who believes if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. I am not saying that if somebody shoots you, you should get shot. But I am a person who believes, if you out here selling all these drugs and your house get raided, and you in there doing what you doing…well…you end up in situations and you brought that on yourself. Live by the sword, die by the sword. But that wasn’t Breonna’s sword. And I cannot let them do that to her. With COVID happening, it feels like they want to just sweep this under the rug real quick. But we will not let this go.

So every morning we all talk, my whole family, we talk like, Okay, well what’s our plan today? We have started talking to Christopher 2X. He’s an activist in the community. We asked him about attorneys and he brought up Lonita Baker. She’s my lawyer. But still it takes about two months before people really start paying attention. On one particular morning my sister writes this thing. And it reads something like, My name is Breonna Taylor. On March 13, LMPD broke in my house and murdered me and no one’s been arrested or charged. She sends it to me and I say, Okay, I’m going to post this on Facebook. Like an hour later, it has like 10,000 shares. It’s like a light switch cuts on and all of a sudden this story is everywhere. Two hours later, it has even more shares. And now people are like, I can’t believe they did this! And now people are asking, When is the funeral? I’m like, The funeral was two months ago. And the next thing I know there’s a protest. I don’t even know anything about it. But somebody ends up calling me and saying, They got a protest going for your daughter. There’s all these people down here. The mayor finally calls—two and a half to almost three months later. He calls because we have filed a lawsuit. So he offers his condolences. And I’m like, Okay. And that’s it.

I see what happens with George Floyd and I am pissed. I don’t know the story. I don’t care. This man is telling you he can’t breathe, begging you to get off of him. And you put your hands in your pocket like this man is a dog or something. But now people are saying, This happened in our city too. If Minneapolis can stand up, so can we. And I think this is about to get crazy. On the one hand, I’m ecstatic that these people are standing up and demanding justice and saying her name. On the other hand, I don’t want people to be hurt. I don’t want y’all to tear up the city. We still got to live here. And still I understand the anger. Breonna was everybody’s sister and daughter. As easily as this happened to Breonna, it could’ve been anybody else’s child. So the mayor calls again. People are getting real antsy, and he doesn’t want them to set the city on fire. They are tearing up the city, and he wants me to come and tell the people to stop. But I don’t do it. Because I know the people don’t want to hear from me. They want to hear from him. They aren’t looking for me. They want to talk to him. That’s his fight, not mine.

And people are asking me to come to the protests. I am advised to be careful with that because if these protests get out of hand, I’m not wanting to seem like I’m condoning that or something. But people want to see me. They want to say they’re sorry. They want to apologize for the police. They want to offer their condolences. They want to apologize for not listening. I can’t believe it. People are begging for forgiveness like, I’m sorry we weren’t listening. I just can’t believe it. I felt like with the whole pandemic, Breonna would be forgotten, and we would just get swept under the rug.

you don’t have to plan elaborate heists or corporate takedowns or systematic sabotages all the time to do good in the world

you don’t have to steal a potato or a federal witness or a small european country or anything to do good

sometimes shutting down racist assholes on facebook is good enough 😊

The Lafayette Police Department were called on Friday to deal with a, “disturbance involving a person armed with a knife,“ located at a convenience store. They arrived and attempted to apprehend Pellerin when they found he was in possession of a knife. He attempted to leave the scene and was then shot at with Tasers, which officers say proved “ineffective.”

He was shot at least 10 times when he tried to enter a convenience store, and was pronounced dead when he arrived at the hospital. 

His name was Trayford Pellerin.  His name was Trayford Pellerin.  His name was Trayford Pellerin.