Black Martyrs, Past and Present: Racial Violence, Christian Imagination, Secular Meanings

In a speech delivered in the aftermath of the conviction of police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd (June 2020), Democratic Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi asserted that the latter sacrificed himself for justice, explicitly mentioning martyrdom. Although dismissible as political instrumentalization, this reference draws strength from a longstanding imagery centered on the sacrificial representation of African Americans who died as a result of racist violence. It is possible to identify a continuum from abolitionist representations of slavery to the lynchings that occurred in the white supremacist South at the time of Jim Crow laws, to the political murders that occurred during the civil rights season (particularly that of Martin Luther King Jr.). The essay aims to deconstruct this discourse, emphasizing its Christian framework, its stances on the Catholic side, as well as its ambiguities and paradoxical effects for the purposes of anti-racist militancy. In the dominant reading, sacralizing the victims of antinero racism entailed a selective focus on violence suffered, rather than violence acted upon. The result was a rhetoric that rationalized senseless deaths, turning them into occasions for national atonement/reconciliation, while at the same time marginalizing the theme of rebellion, protest, and social conflict as instruments of racial justice.