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6.5.2020

“Why is my friend dead?” — Metro Council president David James, fighting back tears while talking about David McAtee, the man who operated YaYa’s BBQ stand at 26th Street and Broadway

FIVE.

1. The New York Times synchronized and analyzed available video — which, crucially, doesn’t include footage from law-enforcement body cameras, because they weren’t activated (bye, chief Conrad) — of the after-midnight shooting Monday that ended David McAtee’s 53-year-old life. Today, C-J investigative reporter Kala Kachmar’s front-page story includes details about that night, when “at least 18 shots were fired by LMPD officers and National Guard troops.” (LMPD has said McAtee fired first.) McAtee took a single bullet to the chest, stumbled with his right hand over the wound, then crumbled to the ground.
            I keep thinking about what McAtee said to Walt and Marshae Smith in 2018 for their photography blog West of Ninth, an interview that appeared in this week’s #JusticeForBreonna edition of LEO. Louisville Magazine wrote about West of Ninth in 2018, and last year West of Ninth did a project for the magazine, including this cover:

            The quote — “It must start with the people” — is from a Chickasaw resident named Kevin, and it seems prescient amid all the protests.
            McAtee talked about his barbecuing with West of Ninth and his hopes as a businessman, in a part of town that doesn’t lack for coverage about its lack of local businesses: “Eventually, I’m going to buy this lot and build. I gotta start somewhere, and this is where I’m going to start. It might take another year or two to get to where I’m going, but I’m going to get there.
            “I have always been blessed with the skills to cook. I didn’t need anything else. People have to eat every single day, and all I need is my skills.”

2. NPR’s All Things Considered has a piece you should listen to that includes details from Breonna Taylor’s life “before she was a hashtag or a headline,” before Kanye West was offering to pay her family’s legal fees in a wrongful-death lawsuit against LMPD. Today would have been Taylor’s 27th birthday. Her favorite card games were Phase 10 and Skip-Bo.

3. Business First has a stark cover — black background, white text — for a story today that asks Louisville business owners and civic leaders to answer this question: What is our way forward? OJ Oleka, president of the Association of Independent Kentucky Colleges and Universities, says, racism “destroys our economy, undermines our liberties, neglects our health and buries our loved ones. It is ruining a city I love and call home, one in which I plan to raise my infant daughter. I want to be able to one day tell her that racism won’t contribute in suffocating her potential like it has the potential of so many others.”

4. “Are you watching Chad Mills again?” My wife has said some version of that to me every night since the protests began. If somebody were to ask me to recommend a show I’ve been watching lately, I’d have to answer: WDRB Reporter Chad Mills’ Livestream on Facebook.
            So much of the recent coverage by local journalists has been indispensable. Last week, I was watching live when WAVE-3 reporter Kaitlin Rust screamed, “I’m getting shot!” as an officer fired pepper balls at her during a protest. On Wednesday she recounted that experience, writing, “The betrayal I felt for just one second is a mere fraction of what many people live with their entire lives. It was a terrible and empty feeling, and the black community around me feel it far more deeply than I ever will.
            “This experience has made me more committed than ever to tell that story. Like all journalists, I’ll keep giving a voice to anyone who’s demanding justice, and to those who are trying to help them. We’ll keep shining a light on all parts of that struggle, even if powerful people prefer the dark.”
            The C-J’s Dominique Yates posted this chills-inducing video of a woman singing “Amazing Grace” at 26th and Broadway as David McAtee’s family went to see his body.

5. Read WDRB sports reporter Rick Bozich’s remembrance of Wes Unseld, the 74-year-old former U of L and NBA basketball player who died Tuesday morning following, according to Unseld’s family, “many health battles, most recently with pneumonia.” Unseld won two state championships at Seneca High School, and Kevin Grevey, who was Unseld’s teammate on the Washington Bullets squad that won the 1978 NBA title, talked to Bozich about the days before the ’78 playoffs. Grevey: “(Wes) looked at me and said, ‘And if I find out that anybody comes up with a case of the Georgetown Flu…’” — meaning a hangover. “I went sober the next six weeks,” Grevey said. “I wasn’t about to let big Wes down.” Some trivia for your next dinner party (remember dinner parties?): Who are the only two players to win both NBA MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season? Wilt Chamberlain, who did it in 1960, and Unseld, in ’69.
            According to a 1974 Sports Illustrated story, Unseld was the first African-American “to be pursued by Southeastern Conference schools, and there was a lot of pressure put on him to play at the University of Kentucky. No way, he said. ‘I told my mother then,’ Unseld says, ‘that if I played in the SEC I’d set civil rights back 20 years. A lot of people felt I should be the first black to play. I told them I didn’t have the right attitude to be a pioneer, that it just wasn’t me. I have the same attitude now. I feel if someone is nice to me then I’ll be nice to them. But if someone isn’t nice, well, I believe in talking to them in a language that they will understand. If a man spits on me I’ll probably spit back. Feeling like that, I didn’t think I’d make a very good barrier breaker.’”
            The day after Unseld died was the four-year anniversary of Muhammad Ali’s death. His widow, Lonnie Ali, said, “I was fortunate in that my husband was able to lead a full life. His life was not cut short by a bullet or brute force.”

OH.

In 2015, before he started at the C-J, Phillip Bailey wrote a Louisville Magazine piece about LMPD titled “Black and Blue.”
            One veteran African-American officer, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said, “A lot of officers are afraid to speak out. I can see why we don’t want to bring up a sore subject for white officers with what’s going on right now. It is job suicide. They will mark you a radical. But it’s time for us to stand up. If not, we’re protecting a criminal with a badge.” An African-American LMPD detective, talking about “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” demonstrations that were taking place throughout the city at the time, said, “I’m a supporter of the protestors. There has to be a change because there’s something broken here. There’s a history of abuse of the black community.”

TOO...

In 2018, the magazine did this story about local artist Ian Klarer, who has created posters for the rap duo Run the Jewels. I only mention it because I’m trying to keep this newsletter local, and it gives me an excuse to mention RTJ4, the soundtrack to our times that Run the Jewels — Killer Mike (maybe you’ve heard of him since he gave that speech?) and El-P — released this week. The title of the fourth track, “holy calamafuck,” pretty much sums up everything.

Josh Moss
editor, Louisville Magazine
jmoss@loumag.com

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