“Every day is March 13th,” said a tearful Tamika Palmer, mother of Breonna Taylor, as she recalls the pain of Taylor’s murder in the Hulu documentary “The Killing of Breonna Taylor.” In the days and months following the death of Palmer’s 26-year-old daughter, and the inability of local Kentucky authorities to hold the officers accountable for Taylor’s death, nationwide protests have erupted, along with intense media coverage, and a reported $12 million civil settlement awarded to Taylor’s family, which has been described as the largest settlement ever to be awarded by the state of Kentucky.
An emergency room technician and aspiring nurse, Taylor was gunned down in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment after Louisville Metro Police executed a no-knock warrant shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020, as she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, lay asleep in bed.
Over 100 days passed after Taylor’s murder with no criminal charges filed against the officers directly involved with her death. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a protege of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, announced on September 23 during a nationally televised press conference that LMPD officers were "justified in the return of deadly fire" after they were fired upon by Walker. Having failed to indict any of the officers in correlation with Taylor’s death, instead, Cameron’s office chose to indict one of the three officers with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment that was not directly related to Taylor's death.
Even in death, the justice Taylor deserves continues to elude her. And as a result, those of us who still have breath in our bodies are refusing to be silent. We are refusing to accept that America is a shining beacon for everyone but the very people who labored for free to build this country—Black people.
In the wake of the grand jury’s decision and public outrage, The Reckoning collected statements from leaders and community activists in Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ community to get a sense of how local thought and movement leaders are grappling with another Black murder at the hands of the state going unpunished.
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