Bloody Boy
The aftermath of Bloody Boy on our sidewalk. Something I didn’t want to forget. (Oct. 22, 2025)
Kendall Dooley is a community development practitioner, scholar, and co-founder of BLK South, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reclaiming and revitalizing historic Black neighborhoods in the South. With a background in Criminal Justice and Missional Theology, Kendall brings a deep commitment to improving the quality of life in under-resourced communities through holistic development, cultural preservation, and creative place-making. His work is shaped by his passion for justice, Black history, and fostering spaces where communities can flourish on their own terms. Learn More
Erin heard the sounds first—shouting, a struggle outside our house. She looked out and saw a young man and a young woman fighting over a purse, walking down the street locked in a tug-of-war neither one was winning. At first, I thought maybe it would pass, but Erin kept her eyes on them. Then she said, “Kendall—it’s time. We gotta go out there now.”
They were young kids waiting for the school bus by other kids. By the time I grabbed my shoes, she was already out the door. Her pastoral instincts always move faster than mine. My hair was half-braided—she’d been roping it up in the living room before my brother-in-law’s wedding this week—and I ran out there halfway done, halfway ready, fully uncertain of what we were walking into.
When I got outside, I saw him. A young boy, his nose bleeding. The blood ran down his face into his mouth, onto his white shirt. It stopped me. There’s something about blood that wakes you up—pulls you out of whatever comfort you were in.
Erin was already talking to them, assessing, de-escalating with our neighbor. We didn’t know what was going on or who they were. Didn’t know if they had weapons or if one of them needed help. But we knew something wasn’t right, and that was enough reason to step outside.
As I watched that blood fall, I thought about how easy it would’ve been to stay inside. To tell myself it wasn’t my problem. To stay safe, stay out of it, keep my peace. But that’s the lie of “peace” in this country—it’s really just distance. We mistake our isolation for safety.
And I started to think about what’s at stake when we don’t come outside. Not just here, in our neighborhood, but everywhere. What’s at stake when we stop seeing each other as neighbors? When we ignore the bleeding—both literal and metaphorical—that’s happening right in front of us?
The truth is, there’s always risk in stepping out. But there’s a greater risk in staying in. Because when you stay in, you become part of the silence that lets systems keep wounding people.
That boy, standing there covered in blood outside a white house—it felt like America staring back at me. This country is full of blood we don’t want to look at. And every time we choose comfort over courage, the stain spreads.
But maybe the invitation is this: come outside. See what’s happening on your own street. Talk to the people in front of your house. That morning, Erin and I didn’t solve anything grand. We didn’t stop the world from breaking. But we did show up. And maybe that’s the point.
Maybe that’s where healing begins—not in fixing the whole thing, but in refusing to look away. Because sometimes the blood on the street is the call to remember what kind of people we said we wanted to be.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
When was the last time you “came outside” — stepped out of comfort or safety to see and respond to what was happening around you? What did it cost you, and what did it reveal?
Where in your life or community have you mistaken distance for peace? What might it look like to let your peace cost you something?
R E C O M M E N D E D R E A D I N G
Notes
Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 126–127.
Stanley Cavell, “Must We Mean What We Say?,” in Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 1–43.
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 11.
Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, 88.
