To: My White Brothers & Sisters:

I pray that you and your families are well. I don’t know where to begin this brief letter. All I know is that I am traumatized and numb and I need you to help ease my pain. As a Black man, I can’t watch the entire video of another Black man being innocently killed at the hands of a white police officer. To hear a man pleading for his life because he can’t breathe is heart-wrenching! On the heels of the recent modern-day lynching in Brunswick, GA, I’m lost trying to explain the actions of white men on black people. 

Recently, I listened to a message about being salt and light in the earth. (Luke 14:34-35). If we are not the salt and the light as children of God, then who is? I’m asking each of you with your influence to be that salt and light for others in your community who may not understand the pain the average black person feels when they see murder before their eyes and feel helpless to do anything about it. I’m glad that many different people in many parts of the American landscape have directly spoken up about this murder in Minneapolis. Yes, it was murder, plain and simple. George Floyd posed no threat while he was on the ground already neutralized by the four officers.

Why am I writing you? I’m asking would you be an INFLUENCER. Each one of us is an influencer! Whether that influence is good or bad; positive or negative, we all are INFLUENCERS. In your respective places in life, I’m simply asking you join us in a just cause. Edmund Burke wrote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for Good Men to do Nothing!” I ask you what if that had been your son or grandson with an officer’s knee on their neck for seven minutes while they pleaded for breathe to live.  I can’t imagine one of you would sit on the sideline of life and not demand justice. You are all good men with good will in your hearts. It is my desire for you to be an INFLUENCER. The Black community can’t be the ones out front raising the conscious of America. It has to be YOU! This is your opportunity to truly be salt and light in your community, state and these United States of America. This promissory note that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about is coming due. If America is to be the leader that we have read in the history books, then you must help seize this moment of truth before this second virus of racism upends the very underpinnings of America the Beautiful; even though the founding of this country is steep in racism. This virus of racism continues to happen right before our eyes and in plain sight for everyone to see. 

As a person who believes in something greater than yourself, I’m asking for you to grab your moral and righteous indignation and look at what continues to happen to Black and Brown People of Color. No, these Brothers and Sisters are not in your immediate family, but they are in the family of God! They are God’s very own child. Each of them has a right to live and breathe in God’s green earth. As I stated earlier, I’m numb as I write this brief letter. You may choose to lay it down and move on to other things. I pray you will choose to do the opposite. I pray you are moved with compassion and action to INFLUENCE those who need to know. I’m not sure who that might be in your space and sphere. You know more than I.

With HOPE,

Rev. Derrick B. Lockwood