It’s been three years since
Sandra Bland died under suspicious circumstances in a Texas jail, and ever since then her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, has been fighting for victims of police abuse.
Reed-Veal has traveled throughout the country with other “
mothers of the movement,” supporting families who have lost loved ones at the hands of police and lending her voice to the movement for change.
Later this year,
a documentary about Bland’s life and death will premiere on HBO—but Reed-Veal said it was extremely difficult for her to watch it at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere last April.
“I’m sitting there at Tribeca watching with everyone else. Then I see my baby in the cell, lying on the ground, all these numbers around her,”
she told the Chicago Sun-Times. “In these three years, I had never seen the crime scene, the photo of cell 95, where she was found. I’d refused.”
“And seeing that thing tore me up,” Reed-Veal admitted. “I left out of a side door, went back to the hotel and sank into extreme depression.”
Though Reed-Veal will be at the Chicago premiere of
Say Her Name, the documentary about her daughter’s life, seeing Bland’s lifeless body on screen for the first time was a shock to the still-grieving mother.
“My head was thrown right back to 2015,” she continued. “I was in the hotel, balled up and crying for three days. When I finally got myself together, I told them, ‘You all never told me you would use her real body. Do you understand that I have never seen that photo? Do you understand that I never wanted to see that?’ They were very sorry.’
Though Reed-Veal said
Say Her Name was “one of the best things” she’s seen about her daughter “because a lot of it is in her own words,” Reed-Veal also clarified that she won’t be seeing the film again.
“I told them I can’t watch that movie anymore for the rest of the screenings,” she said. “It’s too hard for me.”
Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland is slated to premiere on HBO in December.
