CLEVELAND — When Lesley Green was a little girl in Houston in the 1960s — just a few decades after the routine lynchings of blacks in the South — her father would go off to work a late-night shift and leave a gun and a pile of bullets behind. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″]
If any strangers came looking for trouble, he told Green and her sister, you blast them into the stars.
Nobody ever came looking. But even as an 11-year-old, learning to shoot a gun she could barely lift, Green said she recognized the important lesson her father was teaching her about being black in America: it’s a dangerous world out there, and neither the government nor the police are likely be there to save you if trouble decides to make a visit.
Green kept a gun of her own into early adulthood but got rid of it once she settled down and had a family. In the 25 years since, Green, now 60 and living in Cleveland, hasn’t touched a gun. At least, not until the election of President Donald J. Trump.
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