I’m Noah Schoen, and I’m Aliza Becker and this is October 27th, a podcast about the October 27th, 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Aliza and I co-founded an oral history project that recorded over 100 interviews with local Jews and non-Jews about their life stories and reflections on the shooting. Our interviewees taught us so much and we’ve created this podcast to share their insights with you. This is October 27th.

Aliza Becker: Michelle Kenney is someone who defies simple labels. Growing up in a mill town just outside of Pittsburgh, she attended church with the family of her African-American father and celebrated b’nai mitzvahs and weddings with her white mother’s Jewish family. As the child of an interracial marriage, Michelle always lived within and between multiple worlds. 

Aliza Becker: On June 19, 2018, just four months before the October 27th synagogue shooting, Michelle’s 17-year-old son, Antwon Rose II, was shot and killed by a police officer while fleeing unarmed from a traffic stop. In the aftermath of his death, Michelle became a prominent public voice advocating for racial justice and police reform, even as she endured a painful public trial that did not result in a conviction of the man who killed her son. Her family later won a civil settlement with the city.

That year, the windows of many businesses throughout Pittsburgh displayed “Justice for Antwon” signs alongside the “Stronger Than Hate” signs expressing support for the Jewish community. 
Yet there has rarely been room for the fullness of Michelle and Antwon’s story. 

Michelle Kenney: Hi, my name is Michelle Kenney. I grew up in a small suburb in the Mon Valley by the name of Duquesne.

At the time, there was maybe 15,000 residents, and at this point I think there's less than 6,000. That is where, when I was a child, where most of the steel mills existed. But that's where most of the people that I grew up, that's where most of their parents were employed at, US Steel. It was just the go-to job in this state, in this city. 

My mother worked in US Steel. My stepfather drove a local hauling truck for a local waste company. and the company was located right in the town that we grew up in, so he didn't have far to go to work.

Becker: What do you remember about the steel mills?  

Kenney: The dirt. Honestly, the dirt. 

When my family were financially secure enough to purchase a home, they chose a frame house that was white, and we had only lived there maybe two years, and that frame was gray. 

And I never understood what my parents' logic was in getting the siding redone. And on one of the particular sides they had put some of that fake brick. But as I got older, I realized that you couldn't get rid of that gray. Even on the fake brick, it was gray. 

And now, as an adult, when I see that pollution and I see those fumes coming out of the smokestacks, I realize how detrimental that is to the health of the people in those towns. Because when I was a kid, I had no clue of what that could do to a community, other than the fact that your car was gray, your house was gray. It was very dirty all the time. 

Now I get it. I get it now. It’s pretty scary when you think about the impacts that can have on your health. 

Becker: And what was your street like? 

Kenney: A complete street of working class people. There were one, two, three, four, five. Yup, five African American houses on my street, maybe out of thirty houses, fifteen on each side.
I can't tell you that we were treated any different, because I was invited into everybody's house. I went to the store for everybody. We were never stopped from playing or hanging out or making noise or—nothing, nothing. My neighbors were just a bunch of really nice old white people. Really a unique place to live now that I think about it. 

My siblings and I we were fortunate in the fact that our parents catered to our every whim. So, no matter how ridiculous the ask, even if it started out as a no, it ended up being a yes. So, we didn't have to worry about going swimming. We had a swimming pool in the backyard. I didn't have to worry about whether or not I had a new bike or being able to go places or have the best experiences of things, because my parents made sure that we always did.

I remember when US Steel closed down. And they start shutting down locations. And they shut down Homestead, and my mom had to go on unemployment. At the time, they came out with that government cheese. They came in a block. But I remember going down to stand in that line for some cheese and butter with my mom. And as a kid I had no idea what that probably did to her pride and how much that probably impacted her. But as an adult, I understood that when it comes to having kids, you take care of them by any means necessary. 

My mom always took care of her kids by any means necessary. She passed that on to me, and I passed it on to my child. And that little cheese and butter venture defined how I provided for my kids. By any means necessary. 

When US Steel left from down Duquesne, it completely wiped out, because people start moving, needing to find better employment. People started relocating, not just to several towns over—moving out of state. So all of the restaurants that we were familiar with— Kentucky Fried Chicken left, the neighborhood Lunch Box left. And slowly but surely, it wiped out a town.

When I visit that neighborhood now, it just looks so different. All the houses are torn down. And when I was a kid, that was a thriving community, and at any given moment you could be traveling up and down a street and pass multiple people that you knew. Now when you ride over there, you're lucky if you see a car. And the old mill site has now a bunch of warehouses. There's not even a grocery store over there. 

And it's crazy, because when you think about it, as dirty as I tell you that the town was from US Steel being there, the impact that it had on the community was uncomparable.

Becker: How was your childhood? 

Kenney: Chaotic in some extent, but lots of family functions, lots of them. My grandmother was Jewish, and all of her siblings. My father is African American. When you grow up in such a diverse home it puts you in some really strange situations being a child. Attending bar mitzvahs and weddings and other family functions on one side and then attending church and family gatherings on the other side. 

It’s really two opposite ends of the spectrum, but when you bring them together, they just all seem to mesh. Because once you put us all in the same room together, color nor religion was never a topic of conversation. It was just understood.

The Jewish side of my family was real big on gatherings. And the difference in culture is no one had to die, it didn't have to be a birthday. I used to always be like, "They just create parties.” Without a doubt, there was always lots of food, lots of music, and just a party. 

I don't ever remember, not once, feeling unwelcome by my relatives. And nor do I ever remember them allowing anyone else to make us feel unwelcome. 

My mom's older siblings were really into the Jewish faith, and like my aunt, who helped me raise Antwon, she was the oldest of my grandmother's children.

And sometimes I just think about how much the world has changed, because my parents didn't marry until 1976, when it was actually legal for interracial marriages to happen. But yet and still, we treat people worse in 2021 than we did in 1976. Which is strange to me, because I didn't grow up being called the N-word. I didn’t. 

My identity crisis was based on the fact that I just didn't know where I fit in, because you're of mixed race and you don't know who's going to accept you. That was an internal identity crisis. 

I didn't have the issues of feeling unwanted because I was Black, or not welcome with my family because I was Black. And to me it is so odd that, all these years later, you could go into a place of business or have a conversation with somebody, and because of your race or because of your religion, you feel unwanted or unwelcome. And that’s just for me, it's like going backwards. Like all the things I didn't experience as a kid, I'm experiencing as an adult. 

We didn't grow up like that. I know that I'm probably fortunate in that way, because a lot of other biracial children don't have that luxury. Like I think it's a privilege to be of mixed race and be able to learn about the lives of both sides. But I know that a lot of children growing up nowadays may not know one or the other sides, and it has a big impact on them. 

I don't remember any of that. And if so, we may have been shielded, because it just—it didn't happen in my family. It didn't. 

My Aunt Estelle and them and my Uncle Sammy, who their names are over there on them bricks and mortar at the Tree of Life, they never treated us any different. It was just a given that this is my family. 
It’s funny because my Uncle Sammy's son is now a lawyer in New York City, and when Antwon was killed, my mom's sister had said that she got a letter from my uncle's son, and my mom shared the letter with me, and it was just so much of, "We've always been family, and we're teaching our children that this is their cousin." 

It's just like, no matter how many years go by, and even though we're grown now, with grandchildren now, those values of, "This is my family." It was just like, "I guess we all were really raised that way." 
And I don't know if that's what happens in other people's family, but what I know is, if you live all the way in New York, and you're teaching your children that this is your cousin, and you're advocating in New York around what happened to Antwon, then I know that we were raised that, “No matter what, this is my family,” which is a good thing, a good thing. 

Becker: Let's pivot to 2018. Is there anything you'd like to say about what happened in June? 

Kenney: I don't think that anything played a role in my son's death other than his race, and that's the bottom line for me. Because that was June, and come October, you had a white man kill eleven people, and he walked out of there with scratches. 

In no way should my son or those eleven people be deceased—no way. But you can't make sense out of the fact that there's an upcoming trial for a man that killed eleven people who was given a meal after he did it. 

Antwon wasn't even shooting at them, he was running, he was shot in the back. Like, there was no threat there. He was fleeing onto a major highway. So, if he was going to do harm to anybody, it was going to be him. He wasn't running into the community, he was running away from the community. 
If he would have been sick, hit by a bus, train, plane, I would have said, "That's God's will." But God didn't tell that man to go kill my son, nor did he tell that man to go kill them eleven people. 

You don't deserve to die because we don't practice the same religion, or we don't look the same. So it becomes frustrating, because you realize that race and religion do play a part in these things. 
I still struggle with the fact that we're actually having a trial for this man. And for me it is so nice that everybody wants to be like, "Everybody deserves a fair trial." My religious beliefs may tell me that, my moral compass may tell me that, but as Antwon's mom, it doesn't tell me that. 

I'm like, "His fate should have ended that day." And that's a horrible thing to have to struggle with and waver with. 

It causes a lot of like self-inflicted emotional turmoil. I want to be like, "He deserves to be judged by a jury of his peers," but then I say, "Well, why didn't Antwon get that? Why didn’t Antown get that same privilege?" And for no other reason than the color of his skin.

Because, see, I never believed that the legal system was designed to be fair. It was designed to have control. And the question becomes, when the person looks like the people that are in control, how does it work out then? 

See, I honestly understood that there was no shot in the person that killed my son ever being convicted. I knew that. I didn't care about a sham of a trial, I didn't care about a DA, I didn't care about any of that. I knew. I knew he was never going to be convicted. They were never going to convict a white cop in this state, in this county of killing a Black male. That wasn't going to happen. 

But honestly, I know the pain of a trial. I’m going to watch my friends and my family have to endure this pain all overl again. And nothing you can say or do is ever going to bring back their loved on or their friends. I know all too well what that feels like. And the emotional roller coaster that you’re on. And you questioning everything, everything. So trial, no trial, whatever, doesn't change anything that this community has to deal with. 

Would you like to see the person convicted and incarcerated for the rest of their life? Absolutely, so that they can't do this to another person. But does it change what the bad behavior they've already displayed? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. 

And for me, it all goes back to preventive measures that should have been in place for law enforcement to know that these people weren't right. Because in my opinion, on both ends there were warning signs. People knew about both of them—and that's where I struggle is that people knew before June 19th that he wasn't a good person, and people knew before October that he wasn't a good person. 

So, you're going to have a fiasco of a trial with a whole bunch of media attention put all these people through all of that trauma—and nothing changes? 

What you can tell me is, “The next time we see these warning signs, we have laws in place right now that we can go arrest him before it gets to this point.” What makes a difference for me is that none of these lives are lost in vain, and in order for that to to be true, there has to be some action taken behind it. 

Like tell me that the next time you see people posting these hateful messages on the internet that there is a law in place that allows you to take action, so it doesn't get to this point. Other than that they are lives that are lost for no reason. There's no way I'm going to lose my son for nothing. We got to save another life, because that one is lost. 

My son was and will always be my baby. That's my baby. And I can't accept the fact that he's gone, and not by natural causes, not by being in a car accident, but because someone chose to take his life.
And with every breath in my body, I'm never going to let the world forget what happened to my son. I'm not. 

Because just like those eleven people have family member, for a lot of folks, it's just an incident to them. Like I said to you, this is my life. The damage that these individuals do with their decisions, they changed lives, and I just can't let him get away with that and sit back and wait for it to happen to another family. 

And I think about it a lot, because they happened so close together. I do have friends in the Jewish community. This is my family. 

I think that's why it's always imperative for me to remind people that Antwon wasn't just Black. Stop saying that. Like the benefit of having a multiracial or multiethnicity is the fact that you get to live in a world outside of what is your comfort zone, so it makes you a little bit more willing to accept people for being different.

It's okay to be different. It really is. It’s OK to be different. Doesn't have to make you hateful, doesn't have to make you a murderer. It's just okay to be different. 

I think I'm just a firm believer that if you take the time to  get to know people, you find out you ain't that much different. We all got some of the same fears, the same worries, we just handle them different.

But it ain't okay to hate. It's just not. And honestly, there's no punishment for a murderer that's fit. And there's sure no blessings for a grieving family that make it okay. I just know that having to go to a gravesite is a horrible thing. No family deserves this pain.