This story won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
from an adjacent home shows Maud, who’s out for a run in Brunswick’s Satilla Shores subdivision, wandering up a sunny patch of narrow road and stopping on the spotty lawn of a sand-colored under-construction bungalow addressed 220 Satilla Drive. There’s a red portable toilet in the front yard. The garage is wide open.
To fathom what it meant for Maud to be out for a run in Glynn County, you need to know a thing or two about the pastime of recreational running. Before the 1960s, the idea of jogging for almost everybody save serious athletes was this: Now why would I do that? But in 1962, legendary track coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman visited New Zealand and met with fellow coach Arthur Lydiard who’d developed a cross-country training program. Bowerman returned to the States excited by what he’d seen.
Peoples, I invite you to ask yourself, just what is a runner’s world? Ask yourself who deserves to run? Who has the right? Ask who’s a runner? What’s their so-called race? Their gender? Their class? Ask yourself where do they live, where do they run? Where can’t they live and run? Ask what are the sanctions for asserting their right to live and run—shit—to exist in the world.
One of Ahmaud’s best friends, Akeem “Keem” Baker. Keem and Maud would sometimes go for runs together.In those days, Maud’s brother, Buck, just three years older, was a hovering protector. Buck also introduced Maud to the sport he grew to love. It happened during the 2002 BCS National Championship game. Buck’s favorite player at the time was Sean Taylor, and despite the Ohio Buckeyes upsetting Taylor’s Miami Hurricanes, he became Maud’s favorite player too.
Maud tore his ACL and meniscus in a game sophomore year. A less dedicated player might’ve given up, but he completed an arduous rehab. He reinjured his leg the following summer and committed again to a tough rehabilitation. “Our parents used to tell us, if you start something, don’t quit,” says his sister, Jasmine. Maud wore a leg brace during junior year, which hampered him and no doubt limited his prospects of playing in college.
Maud, fleeing now for no less than six minutes, runs toward a red-faced Travis McMichael who stands inside the door of his truck with his shotgun aimed, toward Gregory McMichael perched in the truck bed with his gun in hand, runs into what must feel like a trap, but perhaps feels like another time his courage has been tested. Maud zags one way and the other. He darts around the right side of the truck and crosses in front of the hood.
There’s no evidence of Maud training for 10Ks or full or half marathons or obsessing over his miles or PR times. And yet it’s obvious that he was a young man who loved to run and who by all accounts was a gifted runner. It’s also clear to me that the same forces that transformed running from a fledgling pastime in my white-ass home state into a billion-dollar global industry also circumscribed a culture that was at best, unwelcoming, and at worse, restrictive to him.
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