Blacks Launch 'Cain and Abel' Memorial Project in Columbus, Georgia to Stop Black on Black Homicide Epidemic

Lost in the hilarious madness of the decline of the National Football League (NFL), entirely because white fans are turning off a professional sport where black millionaires are taking a knee during our national anthem, is what's happening in Columbus, Georgia. 

In this 43 percent white city (45 percent black), violent crime is entirely a black problem. Located roughly 60 miles from Atlanta, Columbus is a dystopia, where black crime has reached biblical proportions. ['Cain and Abel' project launch fights black-on-black crime, WSBTV.com, 9-24-17]:

As founder of the Columbus Black History Museum, Johnnie Warner noticed a disturbing trend in the black community. 

"... Prior to the end of the Civil Rights Movement, there were so many lynchings and killings of the black males by the whites," he said. "And here we are now, we're still living in fear - but because of us."

First off, this isn't a proper Afrocentric view of the Holy Bible... 

To address the issue, Warner launched a "Cain and Abel" memorial project in 2016 to denounce black-on-black crime in the community. He started by collecting the name of every local black person killed by someone of their race from January 2013 to December 2015. The list has 57 names. 

But it doesn't include those killed among the 26 homicides of 2016, or the 26 homicides that the Columbus Police Department has already recorded for 2017. 

Muscogee Coroner Buddy Bryan puts the number at 32, because he does not differentiate between a homicide that police consider a murder and one they categorize as manslaughter or a justifiable shooting. 

Many of the victims included in those numbers are young black males allegedly killed by their peers. 

Of the 26 homicides recorded by police so far in 2017, 21 were black males, three were black females, 1 one was a Hispanic male and one was a Caucasian female, according to Mayor Teresa Tomlinson. 

"We have 25 murders via gun violence and one via automobile," the mayor said. 

"We have 14 murders related to domestic violence, fighting, drugs, robbery or pending investigation and 12 related to gang activity." 

Warner recently posted a message on Facebook in the wake of recent killings, asking people to add the names of others who have died since 2015. And he posed the question: "Am I my brother's killer?" 

"The Cain and Abel Memorial is a list of Columbus, Georgia, and Phenix City black Americans murdered by black Americans since January 2013," he wrote. 

"The vision is to one day (engrave) these names on a monument to inspire the next black generations to value black lives and communities. These saints are sacrificial lambs as a memorial of black-on-black homicides, crime, and terrorism. They did not die in vain. Their lives matter too! They were slaughtered by the hands of their brother." 

Following that introduction, Warner listed the names of all 57 victims, starting with Charles Foster, who was shot to death at the now-defunct Club Majestic in 2013 on New Year's Day; ending with Christopher Twitty, who was killed Nov. 21, 2015. In an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer, Warner said he got the names from the Columbus Police Department. 

After posting on Facebook, Warner received comments from relatives of people killed as a result of black-on-black over the past few years. One woman, Vicki Scott, said she was related to number 13 and 55 on the list - David Scott and Dominic L. Mitchell, respectively. 

Referring to Mitchell, she wrote: "... Glad to see his life was not in vain Johnnie Warner. Keep up the good work. Maybe someday our brothers will understand that it is nonsense taking people's lives. It destroys families. How can we fight about other races killing blacks when (we) are the main cooperate (culprits) of the genocide of the black race. Wake up and let's stop the killing of our RACE."

Actually, there weren't that many lynchings prior to the Civil Rights movement, but if you want to run with this myth, go ahead. Won't change the fact black people in Columbus (as well as in Savannah, Atlanta, Augusta, and Macon, Georgia) can't stop killing other blacks. 

But it gets better... [Monday ceremony offered thoughtful, moving words about senseless violence, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, 9-18-17]:

There was an unusual funeral motorcade in Columbus Monday morning. There were multiple hearses, but no caskets. The processional ended not at a cemetery or chapel, but at the Columbus Civic Center. 

This wasn’t a ceremony mourning the death of one person, but many. Too many, too often, and too young. 

As reported by staff writer Alva James-Johnson, members of the predominantly African-American Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and five local funeral homes organized the event to protest and mourn the rash of black-on-black violent crime that has shattered so many lives and families in Columbus. 

The makeup of the group was grimly appropriate. Funeral directors and ministers have had to see too many torn bodies of victims, too much wrenching grief of loved ones, in the horrible aftermath of more of these senseless killings than anybody should have to deal with. 

Many of these murders are committed against — or by — children: “Age-wise, they’re getting younger and younger,” said Taylor Funeral Home owner Evone Taylor. “It’s males, poor, under-educated families that his is happening to.” 

The IMA’s president, the Rev. Ralph Huling, attributed the violence to “vigilante activities” that lead to “anarchy,” and indeed, the stories that emerge after these youth killings are frequently the bleakly familiar pattern of one murder that leads to the next, that leads to the next, that will all too likely lead to another. Huling said the group gathered to urge the community “back to civility, back to the point where we used to love and care about one another and realize that we are our brothers’ keepers.” 

What went uncommented on, but almost certainly not unconsidered, is the reality of how much collateral damage — often measurable in still more human lives — such violence can inflict. Not every victim of a violent crime is an intended target, which makes the outcome not one bit less tragic. 

To the Rev. Johnny H. Flakes III of Fourth Street Baptist Church, neither the problem of violent crime nor the solution can be just matter of demographic or economic circumstances. 

“We have to get the heart transformed,” Flakes said at Monday’s news conference. “We have to get the mind transformed … it’s not just a material poverty problem; there is a morality and a spiritual deficit that’s going on within our community.”Huling said the rash of homicides in the black community “is our problem … it’s going to be us that have to come up with a solution.” 

It was IMA member Edward Dubose, who served multiple terms as Columbus Chapter president and later Georgia State Conference president of the NAACP, who perhaps put the tragedy in the most personal and poignant context: “I envision my children burying me,” DuBose, said, “not me burying my children.” 

By all means black employees of the NFL, keep taking a knee. You're only helping turn white people off permanently from watching professional football.

Meanwhile, in Columbus, Georgia, the real plague (not those other 10) of ancient Egypt is currently killing the city's economic viability, property value, and future: a Nubian nightmare no one, not even the black citizens of Columbus, is worried about stopping.