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When she found out that her twenty-three year old son Amadou had been shot to death by four plain-clothes NYPD officers (in what they claimed was a case of mistaken identity), Kadiatou immediately boarded a flight for New York City. When she arrived, she suddenly found herself the centerpiece of a political and cultural maelstrom which she had not asked for. Further incensed that the media had dismissed her son as “an unarmed, West African street vendor”, Kadiatou decided to write the memoir “My Heart Will Cross This Ocean” and reclaim her son’s identity. Join us as Kadiatou shares with us the stories of her son’s life, her fight for police accountability, and previously unreported facts surrounding the circumstances of Amadou’s death.
You can order “My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou” by Kadiatou Diallo and Craig Wolff here.
You can find out more about the Amadou Diallo Foundation by visiting their website here.
Extra music for this episode was provided by Daniel Birch via a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 license. You can find the track “Brushed Bells Leaving Home” here.
The photo accompanying this episode was taken by Mary F. Calvert for The New York Times.