Reece Taylor Williams

"All uprising long I’ve been trying to allow for the art to move me: the chants, drums, and songs, the voices hoarse with weary familiarity and those allied on the one and the three..."

-Danez Smith, Vanity Fair, September 2020

On the anniversary of my profound confusion is my earnest attempt to not only chronicle the 2020 marches for Black lives and living, but to understand how, and why this moment, out of all the moments, was chosen as “a reckoning.”

I wrestled with this question — this burden of knowing, that when Laquan was killed in 2016, the world did not feel like it stopped — while covering the demonstrations: not just why, but how only now? At the time I’m writing this, I do not have an answer.