May 25th was the International Day of the African Continent, a day to reflect on the continent’s challenges, its culture and its people. More than forty years ago when that date was chosen, the founders of the African Union could not imagine that a year would come that this celebration would be altered by the death of an Afro-descendant.
A year before his assassination, Martin Luther King gave a legendary speech, and now that same speech is ringing again: “Riot is the language of those who are not heard. And what hasn’t America heard? He has not heard that the situation of the black has worsened, that the promises of freedom and justice have not been reached”.
Years later, a man of African descent came to the presidency of the United States. Barack Obama also had a dream and got to work on it. For the first time in history, the face of a black person would feature on U.S. legal tender. The project was to bring the face of Harriet Tubman, a woman who helped free the slaves and participated in the fight for women’s rights, to the U.S. $20 bill. This project had to re-start this year. Donald Trump had halted the project until 2028 because he preferred to have populist former president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
A few months before the 2020 U.S. general election, this $20 bill was the cause of the death of another African-American man, triggering protests across the country. Fire, destruction, ruined buildings, looting, vandalism, shooting, tear gas, Molotov cocktails, thumps, police brutality and the detention of more than four thousand people followed. The White House was surrounded and the president hid in his bunker.
The allegedly fake banknote that on May 25 ended George Floyd’s life was the same bill Barack Obama wanted to change to take a step toward recognizing and protecting the African-American population, and the same twenty-dollar bill as Donald Trump insisted on keeping it a symbol of inequality. That same twenty-dollar bill may well be Donald Trump’s exit ticket on November 3.
