Rest in Peace, Rachel

I first met Rachel King during my very first abolitionist event. I participated in a civil disobedience action at the Supreme Court on January 17, 1997 – the twentieth anniversary of the execution of Gary Gilmore. There were 18 of us – we called ourselves the DC 18 – and Rachel was one of the support staff who remained on the outside. She was an attorney, but was mostly there as a photographer. But she’d broken her foot about a week earlier. Hobbling around was hard and carrying her camera bag was even harder. She wasn’t necessarily graceful about the entire situation, but her foot was bad, the situation was difficult, few of us knew each other, and making requests in that environment was tricky.

Rachel and I struck up an email correspondence almost immediately after that and the emails were deep revelations of the nature of both our connections to the movement. We connected instantly. When she came down to attend the first session of our journey through the DC courts she stayed with me. I was shocked to see her, even though she’d warned me that she’d accomplished one of the things on her list of things she wanted to do before she died – shave her head. In fact, Sam Sheppard, son of Dr. Sam Sheppard the man on whom The Fugitive is based, did the shaving for her. I was impressed with her celebrity hairstyle but it made her head enormous. And cold. I had to lend her several hats and I wondered out loud about her timing. The dead of winter is not the best time for head shaving.

This was the beginning of a fast friendship that lasted the dozen years until now. Last night came the news that she’d finally lost her battle with breast cancer. She died in her home in Maine surrounded, yes, by friends and family. Only 45 years old. The abolitionist community, to which she was completely dedicated, will miss her sorely.