Rayshard Brooks didn’t hide his history.
About five months before he was killed by Atlanta police in a Wendy’s parking lot — before his name and case would become the latest rallying point in a massive call for racial justice and equality nationwide — Brooks gave an interview to an advocacy group about his years of struggle in the criminal justice system. He described an agonizing cycle of job rejection and public shame over his record and association with a system that takes millions of Americans, many of them Black like him, away from their families and treats them more like animals than individuals.
“That’s a hard feeling to stomach,” he told the group Reconnect, as he lamented the lack of support, both in prison and once released. “Once you get in there, you know, you’re just in debt. … I’m out now, and I have to try to fend for myself … clueless of everything that’s been going on, I don’t know, I’m trying to adapt back to society.”
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