Chadwick Boseman

I think what has pushed the outpouring of grief for Chadwick Boseman's passing into another realm for me was the South Carolina governor's order to lower the flags for Sunday, and perhaps my knee-jerk skepticism that the gesture was meant to mollify critics among the state's black population. I cannot recall the last time such an order was made at the death of a native son who was an entertainer.

It seems to me that Boseman's death comes at the intersection of several national crises -- conflict, violence, distrust, disease, uncertainty. We were raw, and losing one so suddenly, at least to the public eye, was deeply wounding.

Though Boseman had been a television actor for years before celebrated roles as Jackie Robinson ('13), James Brown ('14) and Thurgood Marshall ('17), those films rode a crest of public interest in stories of great black men (no doubt buoyed by the Obama presidency). His performance as T'Challa in Black Panther (2018) was actually the second time moviegoers had seen the character as he was introduced in the Captain America film two years before. But the world Black Panther the film explored was so different from that promoted by pervasive racist narratives that it sparked a sort of spiritual black nationalism that was not unlike the posture of Black Lives Matter, which was founded several years before, and other movements trying to counter not only anti-black violence but to inspire a spiritual awakening reminiscent of the Black Power movement of the '60s.

The Wakanda salute -- crossed forearms (right over left) pulled against the chest created by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler -- seemed to echo the power salute of earlier black protest but, interestingly, combined ancient African pharaonic poses and the American Sign Language's symbol for "hug" into an affirming resolution.