A mural depicting Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia is shown. After Arbery’s untimely death on Feb. 23, 2020, people around the country remembered him through artistic tributes. Photo fair use of justjared.com
Almost a year ago, I received a text message from a family member asking if I had heard of what happened to Ahmaud Arbery. Along with the text message, a video was attached. It was on that day that I witnessed and first learned about Arbery’s death.
It’s disconcerting to me to know that the first thing I learned about his life was how it ended.
Prior to May 2020, I had never heard of Ahmaud Arbery. Through news coverage, I became more familiar with the details surrounding Arbery’s death, though I never learned much about him as a person.
A week-long assignment in my American Literature 11 class consisted almost entirely of remembering Ahmaud and the life he lived. A major part of the assignment was a class reading of the article, “Ahmaud Arbery Holds Us Accountable,” by Jim Barger Jr.
Reading the article taught me many different things about Ahmaud that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. For one, I learned that he was not only a Brunswick local but that his ancestry had had a massive stake in the Satilla Shores area.
A map of Brunswick, Georgia, hometown of Ahmaud Arbery, is displayed
As Barger Jr. put it, “Nobody belonged to the salt marshes of coastal Georgia more than Ahmaud Arbery.”
I believe that the story of Ahmaud Arbery is a telling reminder of how quickly one’s life can end and it serves as a precedent for how we should honor and remember those whose lives end in tragedy. Those who knew Ahmaud began the “Run With Maud” movement to remember and honor him.
To me, his legacy is one of hope. Even a year after his death, Ahmaud Arbery’s life story continues to resonate with me not because of how his life ended, but because of what his life meant to those close to him.
