I’ve started, and then stopped writing this column a dozen times, trying to find the words to express each layer of my sorrow.
Night after night, I struggled to wrap my mind around how Lumumba Sayers killed a young man who was innocent of killing his son. How he somehow thought that killing Malcolm Watson would balance the scales of what he felt was an unfathomable injustice: how bringing hell to another family could release him from the one he was already living.
You see, I know Lumumba, personally. I still have his number in my phone, along with over a decade of memories, and his organization’s mission on my mind. In my view, the “Glovez up, Gunz down” anti-violence initiative was a necessary aspiration to redirect potential violence into healthy combat alternatives.
As a street fighter, Lumumba was known as Denver’s “East-Side Mike Tyson.” The man hit his opponents as hard as life hit him, earning him the professional nickname, “Heavy Hands.”
He was my brother-in-arms in the fight to improve the community we came from. Lumumba and I were even costars in Denver’s first feature length urban crime drama, “Grit City.” He schooled me in how to deal compassionately with troubled youth.
I delivered Thanksgiving meals to the homeless with his organization, “Heavy Hands, Heavy Hearts.” His brother even introduced me to Denver’s Black farming community. On a personal level, I have only known the Sayers family as an uplifting presence in the city.
Lumumba’s late son was cast in an independent production I filmed at his boxing gym. Lumumba Sayers Jr. and I ran fight choreography and lines for an upcoming action movie being filmed in Denver, and he was perfect for the role.
Lumumba Jr. was the spitting image of his father in a way that made kinship undeniable. I remember him as a youthful, quirky balance of bravado and shyness. A tough kid with a good heart.
So, the news of his murder in 2023 sat me down in a way that disoriented me for days. I called Lumumba Sr. immediately to express my condolences. He didn’t answer, a fact I chalked up to the dizzying grief he must be living through at the loss of his son; a grief he must have experienced as an amputation of a piece of his very soul.
Never in a thousand alternate timelines did I think his grief would come out of the barrel of a gun at a young father in front of a crowd of emotionally shattered onlookers. A young father who, by all accounts, was definitely not the trigger man who ended Lumumba Jr.’s life. I did not know Malcolm Watson, but I know his family will never be the same. Neither will the Sayers family.
And, that’s just it. Family in the Black community has been the one thing that sustained us through all the oppression and adversity we’ve endured in our journey through the American experiment. An experiment that left us trauma-bonded with ties of loyalty attached to unseen triggers that outsiders may not be familiar with.
Therefore, I cannot say with certainty that I knew the shadows that lurked in Lumumba’s heart. He kept me at arms length from his dark side, and probably for my own protection. I only knew him in the sunlight of his community work, and the lives that his work touched for the better.
Sometimes, a perfect idea chooses an imperfect vessel to manifest through. Therefore, in my view, the idea of “Glovez Up, Gunz Down” is still beneficial, regardless of the fate of the man who brought it to being. The expressed mission of “Heavy Hands, Heavy Hearts” can save lives from violence, even if its creator violently took life away.
No one can blame the Watson family for having zero bandwidth to tolerate any parts of Lumumba Sayers’ legacy.
Frankly, in their shoes, I wouldn’t either. The optimist in me still searches for any silver lining that can be gleaned from this storm that has overshadowed Denver’s Black community.
But, at this moment, for all the loss and pain that both the Watson and Sayers families have endured, all I have to offer is condolences from this heavy heart.
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