LISLE, Ill. — Family and friends of an Illinois woman found dead in a Texas jail remembered her Saturday as a “courageous voice” for social justice. They promised to keep fighting for clarity on the circumstances surrounding her death.
Hundreds of people attended Sandra Bland’s funeral near the Chicago suburb where she grew up. They celebrated her life with words and songs of praise, and her mother danced in the church aisle with her arms raised. She and other mourners, though, said they were still struggling to understand how a traffic stop for failing to use a turn signal landed her in the cell where authorities say she killed herself three days later.
The medical examiner’s office in Harris County, Texas, determined through an autopsy that Bland hanged herself with a plastic bag. The 28-year-old woman’s family has questioned the finding, saying she was excited about starting a new job and wouldn’t have taken her own life.
“I’m going to find out what happened to my baby,” her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, said in remarks that brought mourners to their feet. “My baby has spoken. She’s still speaking. And, no, she didn’t kill herself.”
The traffic stop, which was captured on police dash cam video and on a bystander’s cellphone, and Bland’s death in custody have resonated on social media, with many grouping it with other cases involving confrontations between the police and blacks during the past year.
Bland had spoken out about that issue and others in a series of videos she posted online this year with the hashtag “SandySpeaks.”
Mourners at Saturday’s funeral wore T-shirts with the hashtag. One person had it scrawled across a car window. Some took to Twitter with the hashtag “SandystillSpeaks.”
The Rev. Theresa Dear told reporters outside the DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church that Bland should be celebrated for standing up for herself.
“She challenged and asked the question ‘Why?’ ‘Why should I put out the cigarette?’ ” Dear said. “She asked 12 times, ‘Why am I being arrested?’ And so we celebrate that part of her personality.”
