It is with a heavy heart that I write another letter to our University community to remember more lives lost to gun violence. Yesterday, during a fourth of July celebration in Highland Park, approximately four hours north of Macomb, six people were murdered and at least 36 others were injured.
We remember Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison, Andre Mackniel, Aaron Salter, Geraldine Talley, Celestine Chaney, Heyward Patterson, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young and Ruth Whitfield. These 10 people, who were going about their day as any other, were murdered Saturday in Buffalo, New York. They died in a racially motivated hate crime, what has been called a racist massacre, because they were Black.