Since the Lawrence City Commission in August 2020 approved creating historical markers to memorialize the 1970 police killings of two teenagers, the process to bring those markers to fruition has been slow, but it is moving forward.
Fearless and big-hearted are how family members of a 14-year-old Lawrence boy recently shot and killed remember him. Kamarjay Shaw’s parents and loved ones said they won’t quit until he gets justice.
“We could’ve killed him, gone home and had dinner. That’s how strong the hate was,” Sakeim Dowdell recalled, 52 years after a Lawrence police officer shot and killed his younger brother, Rick “Tiger” Dowdell.
All told, Tiger Dowdell’s murder — at the hands of a police department that had threatened to kill him shortly before his death, his grandmother told the KBI — drastically changed the fabric of Lawrence.
A KBI case file leaves one prevailing question which may ultimately be lost to history: Why did Lawrence Police Officer William Garrett shoot and kill Rick “Tiger” Dowdell on July 16, 1970?
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“A Black body is the most disposable body in America. America has proved this time and time again,” Free State High School student Ryan Brown read from her prize-winning essay Tuesday.
As an epilogue to The Lawrence Times eight-part series on the death of Nick Rice in July 1970, read a personal account of the night’s events from a bystander just feet away from Rice when he was killed.
KU Libraries Exhibits
The KBI will, at least temporarily, continue to keep in the dark records that could finally shed light on a case of police violence that has been imprinted in the fabric of Lawrence for exactly 51 years.
In the nine months since the Lawrence City Commission unanimously approved creating historical markers to memorialize two teenagers killed by Lawrence police, the conversation on what those markers might look like, where they’ll be placed, and how much they’ll cost has mostly gone silent.
