I had a dream

 Last night, admittedly after having sat through ABC's commercial free screening of "Black Panther" and the tribute segment following it, I dreamed of Chadwick Boseman. What I recall are just brief flashes and fragments, but he kept popping into my sleeping consciousness, to the point I was thinking about "Black Panther" when I woke up this morning. 

Now, while I enjoy the Marvel movies as entertainment, I wouldn't presume to call myself a fan. I didn't do comic books growing up. However, I *did* grow up during the 1960s. I remember "Black is beautiful," and marching with my parents in Minneapolis after the March on Washington and Dr. King's assassination. I remember Black Panthers who wore black leather jackets and natural hair and were heroes to their people. I danced to Motown and went to school with Black kids when we moved to a New Jersey town that voluntarily embraced integration in 1964 - and where the 1990 shooting of 16 year old Phillip Pannell by a police officer seemed so shocking. And now it's 2020 and the racists are still killing with impunity. 

So anyway, about a month ago, I watched "Da Five Bloods" on Netflix - and there was Boseman's Stormin' Norman, looking like some of those boys I went to school with, helping tell a story about Black soldiers in Viet Nam. I'm not an easy cry, but I found myself in tears during a scene I will not spoil here. It was that good. 

The night the news broke of his passing, I went looking to see what I could stream and found "Message from the King," a fairly straightforward revenge thriller from 2016, with Boseman playing a South African searching the mean streets of LA for his missing sister. It could have been nothing special - except Boseman's heart was in his eyes every time you looked at him. 

And inevitably everyone on social media has been posting this week about a man gone too soon and how am I gonna tell my kid that T'challa is gone? Those heart wrenching photos of weeping children holding action figure funerals for the King of Wakanda, the fan art. I'm going, "Wait, he did a James Brown movie?" and wondering what else I'm gonna need to rent this week because I missed it on the first go-around, because he was THAT GOOD in what should have been a phone-it-in action movie. 

So last night I sat down with a bowl of popcorn and watched a story about an African kingdom that had saved itself from slavery and war with knowledge and technology and now faced a reckoning with the rest of the world. I let the beauty of the world-building wash over me, I cheered the strength and beauty of its people, and I watched a new-made king, uncertain of his path, grow, and fight and love, and lose his power and find it again.  

Actors are storytellers, and Chadwick Boseman was one of the best. Honor him by remembering his story as well as the stories he helped tell. Honor the Black Panther by inspiring others. By raising others up and empowering them. By listening to Black stories. By supporting Black artists and Black businesses. By protecting and defending Black lives - because we live in 2020 America. Vote. Write your representatives. Protest if you can. Oh, and go get your cancer screenings.