Penning Thoughts

Just weeks after our President so movingly eulogized the nine African-Americans murdered, while praying with their killer in their Charleston church; college official Sandra Bland — who happens to be African-American — was on her way to a new administrative position in Texas.

But she never made it.

Instead, she was stopped by a white Texas police officer — who made a u-turn to follow her car — for failing to use her blinker to signal a lane change, on his turf.

She tells the officer she changed lanes to allow his car to pass.

She’s an easy catch. Who will question him for pulling over a black person, a female black person in Texas?

She complies with the officer, is issued a ticket and cleared to go back on the road. But State Trooper Brian Encinia was not quite ready to end his victory over a black woman.

Rather than walk back to his car, he stays, to ask Ms. Bland to extinguish her cigarette. She refuses, stating he has no authority to make that request.

For questioning his authority to follow his illegal and laughable command, Bland — as seen in this video — is grabbed and forcefully pulled from her car, then thrown to the ground, on which a screaming Encinia appears to force her head.

Three days later, Sandra Bland’s lifeless body was found hung, in a hauntingly empty area of the Waller County, Texas, jail.

Why?

Because she refused to extinguish her cigarette; because she had the audacity to speak back to the white officer.

In police parlance, she “resisted arrest,” for refusing to follow his command.

Officer Encinia acted as one whose authority was being challenged by an “uppity” African American woman.

Tragically, horrifically, instead of starting her new job at Prairie View College, Sandra Bland is handcuffed and taken to the Waller County jail; where, mysteriously, she is found, hanging from a plastic bag, into which she — allegedly — placed her neck.

Jail officials allege Ms. Bland told them she was suicidal; yet they did not put her on a suicide watch, and claimed they found Ms. Bland dead in her cell.

Are we to believe that these white men had nothing to do with this black woman’s death? This woman who was so “uppity” to them?

Someone check the fingerprints on the sheets and plastic bags, please? And the DNA around her neck and police uniforms.

When will this stop?

White supremacists will never get over their hatred. But when will public officials stop them from getting uniforms and guns?

Because it must be done.

Forget another “national conversation.”

We need justice. Now.