42. Sick

Thursday Sept. 24. I’d just finished reading Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. The news about the Kentucky attorney general and grand jury’s failure to charge the three White policemen in the killing of Breonna Taylor was all over the morning news. In a lame retreat, one of the three will be prosecuted for endangering the lives of white residents in a nearby apartment with his wayward shots. Ironically, his bullets didn’t hit Taylor, and the two cops who shot her are not charged at all.

At work, a friend comes in to talk about an upcoming exhibit that will feature people and animal friends. I remember a book I read a long time ago, in the 60s, called White Dog. It was by a French writer married to an American who brings home a German Shepherd pound dog. It’s a wonderful dog—until a Black friend visits. The dog attacks. The dog has been trained to attack Black people. The writer-dog owner tries to reprogram. I can’t remember the ending.

I go online. Romain Gary is the writer’s name. He was married to the actor, Jean Seberg. She played Joan of Arc in St. Joan. I read more. There was a movie, but I didn’t see it. But I remember some of Seberg. I think she shaved her head for St. Joan. She was on magazine covers and became a darling of the French cinema. Girls everywhere copied her short-cut hair. 

In 2016, Iowa Humanities funded a documentary: Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg, Seborg was a noted anti-racist white actor who had joined the NCAA at 14 and took on liberal crusades, including the Black Panthers. She liked their free breakfast program. She gave them $10,500.

The late 60s.  The FBI began to harass her, and spread rumors that a Black Panther fathered her unborn child. Newsweek Magazine published it.  She lost the premature baby, and had an open casket funeral in Iowa to show the world the baby was white.

The rest of her life was clouded—more movies and writing and the marriage failed. When her life ended with an apparent suicide in France, ex-husband Gary said that she never recovered from the FBI harassment and loss of the child. 

Thursday night. Maybe it was cumulative; my stomach churned; I felt sick.

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