My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts

by Resmaa Menakem

For the next activity, you’ll need access to a computer, smartphone, or tablet with Internet access. Go to the Wikipedia page for the 1920 Duluth lynchings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Duluth_lynchings). Take a close look at the photograph of three mutilated Black bodies, one of which has been decapitated. As you look at this picture, what does your body experience? Where do you feel constriction or release? What other sensations does your body experience? What does it want to do? What impulses, emotions, or images arise? Do these feel fresh and new, or old and historical? Which parts of your body want to fight? Which parts want to flee or turn away? Which parts want to freeze? Does a part of you want to shut down and override what you’re experiencing? Is a potentially soothing thought going through your head, such as, Hey, it’s just history, or Thank God people don’t do this anymore, or This is just bad people doing bad things? Now look at the two dozen or so white bodies that are posed around the lynched Black bodies. Look at the expression on each man’s face. What do you experience now in your body? Where do feel constriction or release? What other sensations do you feel? What impulses, emotions, or images arise? Does the experience you are having right now seem new and fresh, or ancient and historical? What does your body want to do? Which parts of it want to fight? Which parts want to flee? Which parts want to freeze? Now imagine you’re one of those men, standi...