How Ahmaud Arbery’s Killing Changed Glynn County, Georgia

It doesn’t require much of a breeze.

But when the wind blows just the right way across the woodsy riverside land that sits between the East and Brunswick Rivers, straddling Georgia Highway 17, the American flag at the entrance to Satilla Shores extends to a state of full attention.

It was in this neighborhood, cloistered under a canopy of live oak branches dripping with Spanish moss, that Ahmaud Arbery was killed in February 2020. On Wednesday, a jury of 11 white and one Black Americans convicted father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan of murder and other charges connected to Arbery’s shooting death; Travis McMichael was found guilty on all counts and the other two men on a majority of the nine with which they were each charged. The decision followed a nearly three-week trial—and more than a year during which the murder served as one of the flashpoints in the national conversation about race and justice in America.

Read more: 3 Men Found Guilty of Felony Murder Charges in Trial Over Killing of Ahmaud Arbery