The Fire This Time

Brightly colored mural honoring George Floyd created during the Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The mural is a painting of Floyd with a sunflower behind him like a halo. "George Floyd" painted on either side of his portrait.

A mural and memorial in Minneapolis honoring George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed there by white police officers on May 25. Photo by munshots via Unsplash

Reflections

The Fire This Time

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of the BU School of Law, pens a letter to her students on recent police killings of Black people and resulting protests

June 19, 2020
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Days after a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man, by holding his knee on Floyd’s neck as he lay on the ground, handcuffed and pleading for his life, an anguished Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of BU’s School of Law, wrote a stunningly personal letter to her students.

She opened by citing James Baldwin’s letter to his 14-year-old nephew, from his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, telling him how racism slowly crushed the young man’s father, Baldwin’s brother. “I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it,” Onwuachi quotes from Baldwin’s letter. 

“As a black woman and dean of a law school—the first dean of color at Boston University School of Law—I struggled with what message I could send to my students,” she writes in her letter. “I even wondered if I could send a message about the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Tony McDade, imagining the backlash when certain words come out of my black mouth…Perhaps surprising to some of you, racism regularly disempowers the seemingly powerful dean.”

Posted on the law school’s website on June 1, the letter has reverberated widely, drawing praise and gratitude from LAW faculty and students, and across the country—and media attention from ABC/Australia and Slate.

Read “The Fire This Time” on The Record

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  • Sara Rimer

    Senior Contributing Editor

    Sara Rimer

    Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald, Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times, where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

    She can be reached at srimer@bu.edu.

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 2 comments on The Fire This Time

  1. I think it’s unnecessary to indicate that the letter has received national news coverage. That line sounds promotional and out of place given the content of the story. Thank you.

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    1. Hi, Joshua,
      Thank you for writing and I appreciate the point you make.
      I mentioned the media attention mostly as a way to link to the thoughtful interviews Dean Onwuachi-Willig did with both those outlets.
      Best,
      Sara

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