Say Her Name: What It Means to Center Black Women’s Experiences of Police Violence

Early one morning in July 2015, a new hashtag – #WhatHappenedtoSandraBland? – popped up on Twitter. The question pertained to the death in police custody of a 28-year-old Black woman from Naperville, Illinois, shortly after her arrest in Prairie View, Texas, on July 10, 2015. Police claimed she committed suicide; her family is certain she did no such thing. They had spoken to her just hours before she was alleged to have taken her own life, discussing arrangements to post her bail.

A few days later, a cop watcher’s video was released by Al Jazeera. You can hear Sandra Bland’s voice in the background crying, “You just slammed my head to the ground! Do you not even care about that?” “I can’t hear!” and “I can’t even fucking feel my arm!” The video ends with Bland thanking the cop watcher for recording the incident as she is placed in a police car. Three days later she was dead.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32870-say-her-name-what-it-means-to-center-black-women-s-experiences-of-police-violence