By Ewin James

A wise man once said that history doesn’t disclose its alternatives; so, we don’t know what would have happened had the three white men who murdered the young black man, Ahmaud Arbery, in their neighborhood in Brunswick Georgia on February 23 2020 been acquitted.

But I suspect that had Travis McMichael, his father, Greg McMichael and William Bryan, been acquitted of all the nine counts with which each had been charged, things would not have gone well for Georgia. It would have been a case of ‘Georgia burning.’ A black power group was seen some days ago while the trial took place with a casket on the courthouse grounds with the men’s names on it.

Now all three men rightly face the possibility of going to prison for life for murdering an innocent black man. From the beginning it was all about race. Had Ahmaud Arbery been a white man jogging in this white neighborhood on a sunny Sunday afternoon at 1 PM he would not have been chased by these white men and shot like a dog. 

Let’s not forgot what happened. Ahmaud Arbery had done nothing wrong. He usually entered a house under construction in the neighborhood of Satilla Shores, two miles away from where he lived across the highway. He was seen on camera entering the property under construction which had a no ‘No Trespassing’ sign and which some white people also entered. He never stole anything and usually went to the back of the house where there was a faucet, quite likely to drink water as he, a compulsive jogger, became thirsty. No one in the neighborhood, including any of the murderers, ever saw him on any property except the open construction sight and saw him take a leaf from anybody’s property.

The fateful afternoon of February 23 Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in the neighborhood and ran past Greg and Travis McMichael’s house. They said he was the guy they had seen on the video at the construction sight.  The younger McMichael grabbed his 12-gauge shotgun, his father grabbed his 357 magnum, jumped in their truck and began pursuing Arbery.  He ignored them and kept on jogging.

As he ran on Greg Mc Michael shouted, “Stop or I’ll blow your F… head off”. He told the police this was what he said. When he called 911 he told the dispatcher that the emergency was “I’m’ out here in Satilla Shores and there is a black male running down the street”.         

Arbery continued to run ignoring them; at one point to get away he turned and ran in the opposite direction. A neighbor William Bryan saw what was happening and drove his truck out of his yard and followed Arbery and tried to run him off the road. Now he had two trucks running him down on the road. Greg McMichael later told police Arbey was “trapped like a rat.”         

When he didn’t stop, they got out of their truck with their guns. Arbery ran to the right out of their way; but as soon as he passed the truck Greg McMichael was aiming his shot gun at him. He shot him dead with 3 shots.          When the police came both men confessed to killing the innocent man. William Bryan told agent Richard Dial of the Georgia Bureau of investigations that before the police arrived at the murder scene, while Ahmaud Arbery lay dying, Travis McMichael said of him “F….  Nigger”.         

The police allowed both men to wash the blood off themselves, took statements from them, but refused to put them in handcuffs while Ahmaud Arbery lay dead in the middle of the street.         

An hour after the shooting Greg McMichael called Jackie Johnson, a prosecutor for whom he worked when he was an investigator and told her what he had done. She ordered that he not be arrested.         

The racism continued right up to jury selection; of the 12 jurors only one was back, in a County with 27% of its residents African American, and in the city of Brunswick, where the crime took place, with 55% African Americans.         

In the trial itself race was played with lawyer Kevin Gough who represented William Bryan saying to judge Timothy Walmsley,  “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here,”  He said this a day after Sharpton sat in the public gallery with Arbery’s mother.         

But good sense or fear of consequences prevailed, and the almost white jury did the right thing in convicting the three men of most of the nine counts each was charged with. Now they will rightly sit in jail for most if not the rest of their lives. And black people can continue to hope that they are nearer to the day when crimes against them because of their color  is a thing of the past.         

The murderers and their lawyers repeatedly sought to justify the pursuit of Ahmaud Arbery on the ground that they were making a citizen’s  arrest which the Law empowered them to do; a Law made in 1863 to allow white slave owners to capture slaves who were seeking freedom. 

Ewin James, a freelance writer, lives  in Longwood  Florida