Five years ago on Friday, Lt. Richard Collins III, a young Black man, was killed at a bus stop on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland. His murderer was a man with white supremacist ties, who demanded Richard step aside and then stabbed him to death when Richard refused.
Lt. Collins was the best of America. He was a leader and a student athlete; he was kind and compassionate and had a deep desire to serve his country. He was poised for a life full of promise. Just two days before he was killed, Richard was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Army. To lose him days before his graduation from Bowie State University has been, and continues to be, a quiet agony for those of us who loved him. While he was exceptional, the circumstances of his death are tragically common.
White supremacist violence has claimed Black lives across America. Just days ago, a man fueled by bigotry and hate walked into a grocery store in Buffalo determined to murder Black people. The same white supremacist ideology that drove that man to plan and kill 10 people is the same ideology that claimed the lives of men like Richard, Ahmaud Arbery, James Byrd Jr. and Emmett Till. It also claimed the life of Richard’s grandfather, Richard Collins Sr., who was gunned down by a white man — a man who was never prosecuted for his crime. The pain inflicted by white supremacist violence spans not only the long history of this country but generations of families as well.
