There's a Straight Line
- amcjami
- Oct 6
- 4 min read
By Rev. Jamesina E. Greene
(inspired by Dr. Allison Wiltz)
“There’s a straight line from slave catchers to klansmen to police officers to ICE agents.”
— Dr. Allison Wiltz
When I first read those words and saw the accompanying images, my spirit stopped. It wasn’t shock — it was recognition. Generations of us have lived beneath the shadow of that line, felt its lash in different forms, and heard its echo through time.
That line is not just history. It is structure. It is system. It is the unbroken thread that has woven racial control into the very fabric of America’s institutions. It stretches from the fields where enslaved people were hunted down like animals, to the back roads where men in white robes burned crosses, to the city streets where police lights flash like warning signs of danger — not safety — for Black and Brown bodies.
The Roots Run Deep
Slave patrols were the first policing units in the colonies. Their job was not to serve or protect, but to pursue, punish, and return human beings to bondage. After emancipation, those same patrolmen — and the mindsets that guided them — simply changed uniforms. They became sheriffs, deputies, and lawmen.
The Ku Klux Klan grew in their shadow. Robes replaced badges, but the mission remained: to terrorize, to control, to remind Black people that “freedom” was conditional and could be revoked at will.
Even as time moved forward, that same energy adapted. During the Civil Rights era, “law and order” became the weapon of choice. It wasn’t about justice; it was about suppression. Protestors were beaten and jailed for daring to demand humanity.
And today, we see it in the militarization of police forces, the mass incarceration of our sons, and the inhumane treatment of immigrant families by ICE. The methods have evolved, but the mission — control through fear and force — remains hauntingly familiar.
When Protection Becomes Possession
What happens when protection becomes possession? When “public safety” becomes a euphemism for racial surveillance? When those paid to keep the peace instead enforce oppression?
We live in a nation that often confuses peace with silence. But as long as there’s a straight line connecting past injustice to present systems, silence is complicity.
That’s why the work of advocacy, justice, and truth-telling is sacred. It is not just political — it is prophetic. It calls the nation to repentance. It demands that we face what we’ve inherited and what we’ve allowed to persist.
Breaking the Line
Our generation’s task is not to ignore the line — it is to break it. To interrupt its continuity with our courage. To build systems rooted in restoration, not retribution.
As I look at my own son, behind bars for a system that too often values punishment over people, I see how this straight line stretches into our present. But I also see the divine assignment of mothers, advocates, and truth-bearers rising to bend that line toward liberation.
We are the generation that refuses to bow. We are the ones who will not let history repeat itself unchallenged.
A Mother’s Cry
A Mother’s Cry was born in the same sacred space where pain meets purpose — where the cries of our ancestors echo through our advocacy. Because if we don’t name the line, it will continue to draw itself.
And if we don’t break it, our children will still be standing beneath its shadow, praying for a freedom that should have been theirs all along.
We see the line.
We name the line.
And by God’s grace, we are the ones who will break it.
Why Byron’s Freedom Matters
The call for Byron Greene’s release is not an isolated plea — it is a mirror held up to the centuries-long legacy of systemic oppression in America’s justice system. His story is one thread in a much larger tapestry woven from the same fabric that once clothed slave catchers, empowered lynch mobs, and armed police forces to control rather than protect.
From the plantation fields to the prison yards, we see a straight line of racialized control — a line that has redefined itself generation after generation while keeping its purpose the same: to contain, to silence, and to destroy the potential of Black men. Byron’s incarceration is not merely the result of one case gone wrong; it is the predictable outcome of a system designed to criminalize Black existence and call it justice.
When we demand Byron’s freedom, we are not simply asking for clemency — we are confronting a lineage of injustice that continues to steal sons, fracture families, and punish resilience. We are naming the truth: that this system was never built to redeem, only to restrain. And we are reclaiming our divine right to redemption, restoration, and release.
Byron’s petition is not just about one man’s freedom. It is about dismantling a system that has weaponized punishment against generations of our people. His freedom represents a turning point — a declaration that we will no longer allow this line of oppression to define our sons, our families, or our future.
It is time to break the line.
It is time to bring Byron home.
Rev. Jamesina E. Greene, President
A Mother’s Cry
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