Kareem, a Black teen, waits for the bus, at night, in a suburban White neighborhood. He is approached by O’Donald, a White police officer. They struggle. A shot rings out. Kareem is dead. O’Donald says he feared for his life. The Police Union’s representative defends the shooting as self-defense. Kareem’s Aunt Janice protests her nephew’s death as racial profiling. There are no witnesses, but the truth will not die. Kareem’s spirit haunts Officer O’Donald, demanding to know why he was killed.
The Pulitzer Center's Law and Justice Group awarded a grant to the playwright and legal journalist Gloria J. Browne-Marshall on this vital new play that offers theatre groups the opportunity to share the beauty of truth with their audience: A leading cause of death of African-American boys and men in the United States is police violence. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences research states that African-American men are 2.5 times more likely to die by police killing than white men by police officers' hands.
Author
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a legal correspondent covering the U.S. Supreme Court for the Milwaukee Courier Newspaper and WBAI radio 99.5FM. She is the author of "The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice," "Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present" and "The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts." Gloria's award-winning articles have appeared in newspapers nationally as well as CNN.com and Time.com.
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a tenured professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College (CUNY) and a founding member of the Gender Studies program. Gloria is a civil rights attorney who has litigated cases for the Southern Poverty Law Center ...[FULL BIO]