This paper explores how the Black prophetic tradition manifests in the current Black Lives Matter era through a consideration of Angela Harrelson’s 2022 memoir, Lift Your Voice: How My Nephew George Floyd's Murder Changed the World. After the shocking murder of her nephew, George “Perry” Floyd, a deeply felt imperative to be a voice on behalf of George Floyd and others who have died like him overtook Angela Harrelson’s play-by-the-rules mentality on racial relations. Reflecting on her voice and visibility since her nephew’s killing, this paper examines how Lift Your Voice demonstrates a shift in the source and scope of prophetic thought since the loss of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others. While scholars of African American religion and Black political thought have found it necessary to include women as leaders of the Black prophetic tradition (West 2014; Shulman 2008; Ochieng 2021), the women included tend to be the exceptional few—trailblazing organizers like Ella Baker and Ida B. Wells, sheroes like Sojourner Truth and Angela Davis, stellar authors like Toni Morrison. In the Black Lives Matter era, however, artistic expertise, oratorical ability, political fame, or academic pedigree are not the sole qualifications for prophecy. Everyday aunts can produce prophetic thought by virtue of their proximity to police brutality’s latest victim. This paper examines how Black prophetic thought has evolved in response to contemporary issues, noting a shift from “exceptional prophets” to “everyday prophets,” and analyzes how individuals like Angela Harrelson remake traditional prophetic rhetoric, such as lament and theodicy, in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Black prophetic thought entails one strand within the larger Black intellectual tradition marked by fiery and moralistic appeals for justice, action, and protest that echo the tone and texture of ancient Israel’s prophets. David Walker’s 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World is widely regarded as a foundational work in the Black prophetic tradition. In this powerful critique of the antebellum era, Walker condemns white America's assertion that enslaved Black Americans are not fully human and beckons them to “repent” as “destruction is at hand.” Walker’s text lays the groundwork for later intellectuals such as Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, and W.E.B. Dubois. However, Walker also harshly criticizes the "ignorant and deceitful actions" of an unnamed, Black woman, attributing her accommodationist behavior to "servile deceit and gross ignorance." This stern rebuke of an everyday Black woman foreshadows how Black prophetic thought as a whole often fails to listen with earnest ears to the concerns of the commonplace, quicker to view the unnamed and average as elemental features in larger social issues needing to be addressed rather than as fellow prophecy makers. Although Black prophetic thought has always encompassed a wide range of stylistic expressions, from highfalutin rhetoric to vernacular, raw emotionality (Ochieng 2021), in previous eras one's social status played a significant role in determining who could claim the prophet title. Indeed, even in the present day, some public intellectuals maintain that they can declare themselves as prophets (Ochieng 2021). However, the Black Lives Matter era, characterized by a widespread social media culture that generates globalized protests out of local police violence, presents a unique context where the criteria for prophethood depend less on one's social position and more on one's random placement within a racialized web of routinized police brutality and Internet visibility. Scholars have noted the evolving nature of Black prophetic thought in recent times (Ochieng 2021; West 2014; Baker 2008), but there is limited discussion on how contemporary political conditions give rise to specific types of prophetic voices that differ from those of previous eras.
One prophetic voice emerging from an everyday individual is Angela Harrelson, the aunt of George Floyd. Though Harrelson was raised to abide by the rules of racial order in the U.S., the death of her nephew heightened her awareness to the persistent threat of racial violence, ultimately leading to what she calls an “inner need to be a voice.” Floyd’s sudden murder awakened something in her that had otherwise been tamed through decades of behavioral self-regulation aimed at preventing racial profiling, discrimination, and violence. The internal struggles of a grieving aunt resulted in oral and written manifestations that call to mind a litany of racial trauma from her past. As she grieves Perry, she releases a sobering lamentation to America. She laments her upbringing in the “racist South” in the 1960s-1980s, including familial pressure to be submissive to white people, discriminatory practices in the U.S. military, her brother’s racially-motivated death as a baby, and the challenges of being the exceptional, token high school cheerleader. As she grieves Perry, she expresses a theodicean cry that holds Perry’s death in tension with a warming international response and movement to act during and after his murder. “Something changed when Perry was killed. It really hit humanity,” she writes. Calling Harrelson an everyday prophet does not imply that she lacks education or knowledge. Harrelson is an educated individual, but her pursuit of education did not automatically result in social criticism. The death of Perry did. Harrelson’s autobiographical poetry in Lift Your Voice represent a sector of contemporary Black prophetic thought that originates, not from academic polemics or celebrity activists, but from the gut-wrenching heartbreak of losing your nephew too soon to inexcusable police violence. Analyzing Harrelson’s prophetic intonations demonstrates how Harrelson is one among other everyday prophets that challenge existing conversations around the scope and source of Black prophetic tradition in the Black Lives Matter era.
This paper explores how the Black prophetic tradition manifests in the current Black Lives Matter era through a consideration of Angela Harrelson’s memoir, Lift Your Voice: How My Nephew George Floyd's Murder Changed the World. I argue that Harrelson’s autobiographical appeal demonstrates a shift in the source and scope of Black prophetic literature and orations in the current political moment. Artistic expertise, oratorical ability, political fame, or academic pedigree are no longer the sole qualifications for Black prophecy-making. Everyday aunts can render prophetic thought by virtue of their proximity to police brutality’s latest victim. Analyzing Harrelson’s prophetic intonations demonstrates how Harrelson is one among other Black maternal figures that challenge existing conversations around the scope and source of Black prophetic tradition, demonstrating a shift from “exceptional prophets” to “everyday prophets” in the Black Lives Matter era.