William

III.

WILL

"Baby you a song, you make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise!" Danny sung off key.

"This is why I hate giving you the aux. You always playing this country ass shit."

"Stop acting like you don't like my music." He replied as he danced to the music.

"Whatever, bro and you can't dance." I laughed at his horrible dance moves.

"You know you want dance lessons from me, bro." He said as he kept dancing.

We pulled up to Jenny's parking lot, parked the car, and got out.

"Good ole Jenny's. Good and bad memories here." I said as I closed the car door.

There used to be a lady by the name of Jenny Martin. She was married to a chef named Joseph Martin and was the mother of two teenaged boys, James and Ricky. She was the nicest person in the community and everybody loved and respected her. Even though she was African American, she was loved by all ethnicities. She knew in our predominantly black community, we always had issues with racism and police brutality.

She would organize friendly protests for the community and help do fundraisers to get money for our public schools. Her fundraisers were the most fun. She would always host a karaoke night at the restaurant her husband worked at and charge $5 to attend. She would always be the one to go first just to break the ice for everyone else. Her voice was so beautiful.

Everyone believed she could've had a career in singing. It wasn't until the day that shook our whole community. Mrs. Martin was throwing a friendly protest against the recent police brutality that's been happening in the community until it turned violent when officers were aggressively arresting teenagers, one being her son Ricky. A buff caucasian cop threw Ricky down on the ground putting all of his weight on him. Many other protestors tried to run to his rescue, but other cops were holding them all back.

Mrs. Martin tried to get through, but she didn't have any luck. That was until Ricky screamed he couldn't breathe. At that moment, it was like something took over Mrs. Martin as she pushed passed all the officers and ran towards her son. The officer that was holding down her son saw her running towards him. So, he took out his gun and pulled the trigger.

Many people ran from the scene after that, while others stayed to see Mrs. Martin on the ground struggling to breathe as she held her chest tightly, where the bullet struck her. Her other son, James, ran to her quickly in tears, telling her it was going to be okay.

Ricky wanted to get to her so bad, but he was still on the ground handcuffed. Everybody stood there in shock, while Mrs. Martin laid there bleeding out in her son's arms. One of the other officers called an ambulance, while the officer that pulled the trigger, stood stuck, knowing that he shot the community's biggest advocate.

The ambulance came and rushed Mrs. Martin to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead upon arrival. Her husband had finally arrived to the scene, where Ricky was still in cuffs crying. They released Ricky into his father's care and they both rushed to the hospital to find out the terrible news. A couple days later, we held a vigil for Mrs. Martin and talked about all that she did for the community. We as a community felt like we owed her for her efforts, so we held a huge fundraiser to raise money to build a karaoke restaurant.

Our fundraiser got national attention and people from all around the country sent in donations. The fundraiser was a huge success and we were able to build the restaurant named Jenny's to honor Mrs. Martin. Not a day goes by when we don't miss her and what she did for our community, but this is the harsh reality of the world.