Last Words Cover Harvard Law Professors’ Portraits

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading...

Summary: Portraits of Harvard Law professors, both past and present, have been covered by #LastWords fliers, many of which commemorate the last words of victims who have been killed by police.

For the past several months, protests have broken out nationwide after the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, both black men who many feel were unjustifiably killed by white police officers.

  

What

Where

Search Jobs

Read an analysis of the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case here.

There have been many different types of protests, from peaceful “die-ins” where protestors lay in the street as if dead to commemorate the fallen, to destructive looting, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to business owners.

However, a very different form of protest has emerged at Harvard Law School, ABC News reports. In the main building of the campus, faculty portraits line the walls. Those portraits are now covered with #LastWords fliers, which document the last words of victims who were either killed by cops, or whose deaths rocked the criminal justice system.

A state of emergency was declared as the grand jury decided whether an officer would be charged for Michael Brown’s death.

One such flier reads, “I can’t breathe.” These were the last words of 43-year-old Eric Garner, who died as the result of being placed in a chokehold by a police officer. The portrait of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, a former Harvard Law professor, is covered by a quote from Oscar Grant: “You shot me. You shot me.” Grant was unarmed when a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer shot and killed Grant in 2009.

A third flier, memorializing the last words of Trayvon Martin, says, “What are you following me for?” Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a member of a neighborhood community watch group, when the two were involved in an altercation after Zimmerman followed Martin through the neighborhood, according to CNN.

Here’s Zimmerman’s view of what happened that night.

Photo credit: abcnews.go.com