Chadwick Boseman: Long Live The King!

I woke up this morning sick to my stomach, and with an ache so deep in my heart that I knew this wasn’t a bad dream or a poorly written joke. What I was experiencing was “devastation”, as hard as vibranium, striking the souls of black people far and wide.

I would wager a bet that most black people believed they knew Chadwick Boseman (personally), or they at least knew someone who went to school with him!😄

He was only three years older than me. He attended Howard University, an historically black college, like my alma mater, Morgan State University. And, he transformed in front of our eyes into some of the most notable and influential figures in African American culture.

From Jackie Robinson to James Brown, Thurgood Marshall to King T’Challa, Chadwick Boseman was a manifestation of our black power...and today he’s gone.

In 2020, during a global pandemic, under the weight of officers’ knees, and in the face of governmental thievery, today’s black youth find themselves in the precarious position of a possible new world order, but, yet, through the fictional world of Wakanda, we saw the vision.

T’Challa was our on-screen representation of young black leaders, and Chadwick Boseman was our guy, that dude, the relatable face for a new generation. 

Dionne Joyner-Weems speaks to Baltimore City first graders about the rich African-American culture they can explore right in their own backyards. #MyBmore

During one of the movie's most pivotal and metaphoric scenes, T’Challa returns home, after the death of his father, to take his rightful place as King. A story not dissimilar to Black America’s continued fight to reclaim the world that was created by our existence.

T’Challa demonstrated the strength of our heritage but he also revealed the vulnerability of the grueling life and death battle. T’Challa stood in shallow waters, under watchful eyes, weary, beaten and bloody. Everyone awaits the final blow. It’s inevitable. How could one person possibly bear so much? 

But, through T’Challa, and on the back of his black mother’s scream, Chadwick Boseman harnessed his God given gifts and showed the world “who we all are”. 

Long live the King!