How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

Laymon has had guns pulled on him by four people. One was a white undercover cop. Another was a young Black man who tried to rob him of the meager leftovers of a work-study check. Another was his mother. He has twice pulled a gun on himself.

When Laymon was 17, five years younger than Rekia Boyd was when she was shot by an off-duty cop in Chicago in 2012, his friend Troy asked him if he wanted to go to McDonald’s. As they left, Laymon held the restaurant’s door open for a scruffy-looking white man in a John Deere hat. The man thanked Laymon. Several minutes later, the man caught up with Laymon and his friends on the road, lowered his window, and screamed “n***** lovers” before driving on. On I-55, they pulled up beside the white man’s car and cursed at him. Then, the man pulled out a police siren and set it atop his car. When Troy drove into his apartment complex, the white man in the John Deere hat knocked loudly on the back car window. He held a gun in one hand and a badge in the other. He told Laymon to get out of the car, held a gun to his chest, and told him he was going to jail. Laymon refused to go anywhere. A Black cop then arrived, accusing the group of having done something wrong. The situation was resolved only when another white cop arrived, told them that the man in the John Deere hat “[had] been drinking too much,” and let them go (143).

Sixteen months later, Laymon was 18. He was three years older than Edward Evans was when he was shot to death “behind an abandoned home in Jackson in 2012” (143). He and his girlfriend, Nzola, were walking back from a Subway to the Millsaps College campus with two of her white friends. It was nighttime. A car full of Black boys pulled up alongside them. They had blue rags covering their noses and mouths. A boy who looked no more than 16 got out of the car, clutching a gun. Laymon drew attention to himself to protect Nzola and put his hands up. The boy put the gun to his chest, while patting Laymon down for money. Laymon didn’t have any. The boy looked back toward the car, confused. He took the gun off Laymon’s chest and got back into the car.

Several months later, Laymon got a gun. Laymon didn't get the gun because he was afraid of being robbed again, but because people at Millsaps didn’t like what he was writing in the school newspaper. Several weeks later, George Harmon, the college’s president, shut down the paper “in response to a satirical essay [Laymon] wrote on communal masturbation” (145). He received a letter in the mail with the ashes of his essays, saying that if he didn’t change his ways, he would end up like the ashes of those essays. When his mother parked her car on campus, her tires were slashed. In an English class, another student said that Laymon should have been killed for what he was writing.

One day, in the parking lot at Laymon’s dorm, some members of the Kappa Alpha and Kappa Sigma fraternities were standing near Nzola’s car. He and Nzola were preparing to drive to work. Some of the fraternity members had on blackface, Afro wigs, and Confederate capes. One of them called Laymon a “n*****” and Nzola a “n***** b***” (145). He went back to the dorm to get his gun. He decided against it and picked up a bat instead. Laymon approached the fraternity members and threw down the bat, saying he could beat them up without it. More insults were exchanged until security and a dean broke up the altercation.

During their first break at work, they decided to call a local news station. They met a news camera crew at school. The camera captured footage of students in Afro wigs, blackface paint, and Confederate capes. George Harmon, embarrassed by the footage, decided to put Laymon, Nzola, and two fraternity members “on disciplinary probation for using racially insensitive language” (146).

Meanwhile, Nzola and Laymon hurt each other, largely because Laymon refused to put the ideas that he read from Black feminist theory into practice. He told her that she didn’t know what it felt like to be a hunted Black man. Several months later, Laymon was 19. He was 4 years older than Hadiya Pendleton was when she was killed in Chicago. He was sitting in President Harmon’s office. The president decided to suspend him for taking and returning The Red Badge of Courage “without formally checking it out” (148). Laymon had, indeed, taken the book for Nzola’s brother. He never believed he could have been suspended for such an offense. Harmon told Laymon, while looking at his mother, that he would be allowed to return to the college “in a year only after having attended therapy sessions for racial insensitivity” (148). He would then be on a kind of parole. Unless his behavior was perfect, he could be expelled.

On the way home, Mama was crying and asking why Laymon took the book. She blamed Nzola for asking him to check out the book. Laymon said that it wasn’t Nzola’s fault. He had left his ID behind and didn’t feel like going back to his dorm to get it. His mother said that his grandmother would be so disappointed.

The NAACP got involved and filed a lawsuit against Millsaps College on Laymon’s behalf. He enrolled at Jackson State in the spring. Laymon was living with his mother, but they argued a lot. One night, while Laymon was filling out his application to Oberlin, his mother told him to type the rest of his application. Laymon insisted that this didn’t matter. He said some other things, too, that offended his mother so deeply that she got her gun and told him to get out of her house. She told him that he refused to listen until it was too late. She ordered him to leave and not to return.

In the morning, after his mother left for work, Laymon broke into her house and got the gun. It was dark and hot in the house. They hadn’t paid the phone or utility bills. He went into the bathroom, got into the bathtub, and put the gun to his forehead. Then, he dropped the gun. Over the next few weeks, he spent more time at home. His mother was out of town with her boyfriend. He still hadn’t paid the phone bill, so he used a pay phone to call one of the admissions counselors at Oberlin, who said that Laymon’s chances of acceptance were good because of what had happened at Millsaps.

A month passed, and there was still no news from Oberlin. Laymon spent time playing basketball with his friends. One night, they found a Black woman moaning for help. She had been beaten by three men. Laymon and his friends tried to comfort her. They called the police and an ambulance. When the police arrived, they asked her a lot of questions and looked at the three men sitting near her. The woman told them that Laymon and his friends had helped her after she was raped and beaten by three Black men in a Monte Carlo. One of the men, she said, was her boyfriend. She would not name him, however.

Several weeks later, Laymon got an acceptance letter from Oberlin. The college was also offering him a great deal of financial aid. When he left Mississippi, Laymon was 22, “three years older than Trayvon Martin [was] when he [was] murdered for wearing a hoodie and swinging back in the wrong American neighborhood” (155). Four months later, a 20-year-old friend of Laymon’s, San Berry, who also went to Millsaps, got convicted for taking social worker Pam McGill into the woods and shooting her in the head. He did this while a 17-year-old Black boy named Azikiwe waited for him in his car. Berry claimed that the boy prompted him to commit the murder.