As the march toward justice has culminated -but not ended- in a $100 million lawsuit for the family of Kendrick Johnson of Valdosta, Georgia, let’s go over a few newsworthy details about the case which you may already be well aware of:

•  Initially ruled an “accidental” death because of ‘positional suffocation’, the body of Johnson was discovered rolled up in a wrestling mat with multiple visible injuries to his body. It was easy for the state of Georgia to dismiss Johnson’s death — in this state and most others, he would not have been considered a teen who was worthy of thousands of taxpayer dollars in investigations, by merit of his race alone.
• Though there is a video that shows the date and time Johnson entered the gym, video footage mysteriously becomes “jumbled” and disappears after that point — critical footage that should have shown who Johnson encountered and what happened that caused his death, because it has become more than obvious that his death was no accident.
• Not only did Johnson suffer blunt force trauma, and his death was anything but an “accident,” but a second autopsy also revealed that all of his vital organs were removed and his body cavities stuffed with newspaper. In other words, someone killed Johnson … but who, why, and where is the rest of the video footage showing the last person or persons that he talked to? Also, where is the list of all organ transplants that were done shortly after the time of his death, starting in Georgia? There is a window of time in which transplants must be done, so ‘suspect’ would be any organ transplants that were done within some hours after Johnson was murdered. Did the funeral home remove and sell Johnson’s organs, or was it done prior to the time he was rolled up in the mat with his gym shoes tucked neatly at his feet?
• For all intents, in the $100 million lawsuit — the judicial system in Lowndes County, including the sheriff, certain members of the FBI, and potentially even the judges who recused themselves from the case and the hospital morgue and funeral industry itself, could have been involved in the conspiracy to cover up the true cause of the death of Kendrick Johnson.

Herein lies the problems with the conspiracy and cover-up that are peculiar to Johnson’s case:

All seven Southern Judicial Circuit judges want nothing to do with the lawsuit — which says a lot about their involvement with the cover-up; however, when the dust has blown over, it’s going to open up more questions than it will ever answer.

How many “secrets” do the graves of murdered Black teens, and Black men and women, hold in this country, especially in the south?

Is “Black people kill Black people” a valid justification for the wanton race-based deaths and murders of Black teens and Black people overall that have mysteriously escalated three-fold or more since late 2008, or is there a difference when “white people kill white people” that America doesn’t believe they automatically warrant the death penalty because of it?

This isn’t just a matter of reparations for Kendrick Johnson’s family, it’s a matter of reparations for Black Americans across this nation and around the world who have fallen at the hands of racism and white supremacist injustices over and over and time and time again — injustices in which very few whites, even those who confessed to their crimes in public, were punished for what they had or have done.

In the state of Georgia, there was a law that is still on the books that the maximum amount of time that can be served for killing a “nigger” is four years, regardless of who does it or why. Some say it is an antiquated law that doesn’t apply any more, but look around you and take a moment of silence as you do.

Even if Johnson’s murder is solved and we all know that ‘everything done in the dark must come to the light’ eventually, will the murderer or murderers even be judiciously and rightfully punished for it? History has shown that most have not been.

Some introspection and a whole lot of evidence shows that there isn’t much by the way of punishment when “blacks kill blacks” or when “whites kill blacks,” like there is when “whites kill whites” or “anyone kills a white,” and these folkways in the deep south are not as “antiquated” as some would have you to believe they are.

“The past” is most assuredly not behind us, and it looks like it never will be.

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SIDE NOTE: Like the Atlanta child murders, all young Black victims – when one or two cases were allegedly solved, every single one of the rest of them rode with the alleged murderer though there was no real evidence on hand to show that Wayne Williams, the convicted man, killed any of them. Williams’ conviction was simply a convenient excuse to write the rest of the “Georgia pickaninnies” off.

On the other hand, there was the conviction and state-sanctioned murder of Troy Davis, with no evidence whatsoever that he had killed anyone. There was no DNA evidence, not even so much as a murder weapon to be found anywhere, but what there was were seven of nine witnesses who admitted they had been coerced under duress by the police into testifying against Davis, and one of the witnesses who was actually the last one seem with the unfound weapon in his hand before the shots went off. It’s obvious that someone Black killed the white cop in Savannah, Georgia, on that fateful night, but it was most definitively not Troy Davis. He was ruled out a long time ago, but they killed him anyway and the cop’s actual murderer still has not been found, nor convicted. Now that Davis has died for the crime of someone else, this white cop’s soul shall never rest in peace.

It is highly easy, just to watch this Valdosta, Georgia Kendrick Johnson case alone, to ascertain that there has never once been an ounce of complete honesty or truth that has ever come out of a capital crime case in Georgia that involved a Black person as an accused killer, or as a victim. In other words, if a Black person is involved one way or the other in these cases – as accused or as victim, nothing the government officials who are entrusted with our lives and securing good quality evidence do or say can be taken as truth.

This is one state amongst many in the south, where all bodies of Black murder victims should be exhumed, re-investigated, and a case for more than $777 trillion in reparations can be based on the handling of those cases alone.

Let’s not even begin discussing, to add to that, all of the current cases of racism and white supremacy amongst their heirs and those of us still living now.

The Bible tells us two things: Everything done in the dark shall come to the Light, and the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. Nobody overrides or supersedes the mercy and grace and timely intervention of the Lord God Most High, no matter who they think they are, or who they thought they were at one time.