Both women were found murdered August 12 in the family room of Shani and her older sister, Wanda Pasha, in Piscataway, N.J. Each is reported to have suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the head and body.

Although Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan does not consider Pasha’s estranged ex-husband, James L. Coleman, a suspect, detectives are still searching for him. Coleman, who also goes by the name of Ibn El-Amin Pasha, had a restraining order issued against him on April 27. In early July, he was charged with pointing a handgun at Pasha’s head in her home and threatening to kill her.

Coleman, whom Pasha divorced in February, has not been charged but has been considered a fugitive since July, Kaplan said.

Pasha, who filed a total of 12 mostly neglected and unanswered domestic violence complaints against Coleman, was on the West Coast at the time of Shani and Rayshon’s senseless deaths.

During funeral services held at Metropolitan Baptist Church, in which Rev. Dr. David Jefferson Sr. read the eulogy, Amiri Baraka, New Jersey’s most recent poet laureate and acknowledged father of the historic Black Arts Movement, who co-authored “Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women” (Quill, 1983) with his wife, Amina, spoke on behalf of his beloved daughter, Pasha.

“She filed 12 reports with the Piscataway Police Department.” Baraka repeated: “Twelve reports. How many times do you have to say there is a crazy man out here who is going to kill me?”

Baraka's indignation aroused resounding applause from the filled-to-capacity Metropolitan Church congregation. His daughter's case mirrors that of many women involved in domestic violence disputes who receive little if any help or protection under the law from the police department until it is much too late.

“It’s a sad occasion,” said Teddy Harris, a collage artist who traveled all the way from Philadelphia, Pa., with his friend Kinshasa Coghill to attend funeral services for Shani and to support the Baraka family. “All of this is so unnecessary.”

Harris’ sentiments echo that of poet Ted Wilson, a friend of the Barakas, who knew Shani since she was a little girl.

“There's not enough words you can say unless you have been in this place before,” said Wilson, who was also in attendance at Shani’s home-going services. “That is, having buried a child from a violent act.'' Wilson then quoted from the preface of a poem he had written for Amadou Diallo, son of activist-author, Kadiatou Diallo.

 Amadou was killed in 1999 after four white New York City police officers fired a barrage of 41 gunshots into his 23-year-old body.

“The most horrific act that one can experience is to bury a child,” Wilson said. “And for a mother to bury her child from an act of violence is the most devastating thing in the world.”

Born to Amina and Amiri Baraka on Oct. 23, 1971, in the middle of what her parents might call “the torrent of struggle that characterized the Civil Rights Movement,” Shani Isis Makeda Jones Baraka was a gifted, self-determined, talented young Black woman who, as her older brother Ras noted, “was full of life and fire.”
After finishing an early education at Madison Avenue School, she went on to graduate from University High in Newark, where she was considered “one of the brightest stars on the girls basketball team.”

While on a four-year basketball scholarship to Johnson C. Smith, a historically Black college located in Charlotte, N.C., Shani, at 5’1” (she always said 2), quickly established a name for herself as point guard. She impressed coaches, teachers and peers alike with her “aggressive but silk-smooth game,” which she patterned after Isiah Thomas, who was also short. Most recently, Shani taught science and language arts at Valisburg Middle School and was also assistant coach (to Head Coach Joanne Watson) at Malcolm X Shabazz High School, where she played an important role in helping the girls basketball team bring home the gold medal this year.

Averaging 13.8 points, 4.1 rebounds and 11 assists, Shani, who graduated magna cum laude from Smith, still holds the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) records for steals and assists. In 1993, she was named CIAA Women’s Co-Player of the Year and has to her credit a distinguished Honorable Mention on the Eastman Kodak All America Team.

Her companion, Rayshon Holmes, was mother to an 8-year-old boy and was a well-known, respected member of Newark’s prodigious Black community.

“Shani was the best of us all,” Ras Baraka, an alumnus of Howard University, said in a loving, deeply passionate and moving speech he gave just before his father’s. “She had the most courage. And if you knew our family, you knew she would fight first. She had more fights than all of us put together. That’s why we couldn’t protect her, because she was too busy protecting us.”

Through tears, which began to stream down his cheeks, Ras asked: “Then why is she dead? And her friend, too? Why couldn’t we save her in all of our Blackness, prayers, our revolution talk, our [healing] conferences? Why couldn’t we keep her alive? How can we shape a community and let our little sister die?”

Ras’ memorable, heart-wrenching speech brought the congregation not only to tears, but also to their feet, much like his father did when he delivered a gripping, prophetic statement he'd recently written for Shani. In his statement, which was fused with a sense of conviction and fire, Baraka spoke out against the evils of internalized racism and homophobia within the Black community, as well as the need for men (who are often conditioned in society to “hate” women, who are “triply oppressed by gender, race, and class'') to ''stop killing our women! Stop killing our babies!''

Earlier in his speech, Baraka asked: “Who killed our little Shani? I ask it for her mother, my wife, Amina, for her brothers and sisters, her aunts and uncles, her nieces and nephews, for the people who loved her, all the people who love our little Shani. For gay friends and straight ones. All of us want to know who killed our Shani. As little as she was, we know you didn’t have to kill her.”

Baraka then concluded by speaking directly to the people, the Piscataway Police Department and the mayor: ''This is a mostly Black city. A Black mayor. A Black police director. Elected by the people of this city or appointed with great expectations from those people. And it is your job, which you have sworn to us to carry out. That is why I have told all these snarling young folks and growling not-so-young ones to try to be cool, though this thing has hacked to the bone, has shot us, like Shani, directly in our hearts. The heart of the people and city of Newark.'' Baraka said: ''You must find this maniac very soon. That is your job. That's why you are paid by us, what you were elected by us, to do. But if you do not do it, and do it soon, then people will get angry past angry. And some of them, especially the young ones, might also lose their lives to the same killer. And if that happens, I said, no one will have to campaign against you or call you political names. If you let the murderer of our little Shani get away, anarchy will break out in this Brick City of ours. And you will be cursed and screamed at and finally pulled down!''

Poet Sonia Sanchez, herself a leading female of the Black Arts Movement and close friend of the Baraka family, in 1965 taught one of the first Black studies courses in the nation at San Francisco State University. She read a poem called “A Pavane for Shani: A Young Sister Warrior.” Through tears, Sanchez asked:

“How have we come to this place

with the scent of summer bursting from her young feet?

...Come come come drums beating a whole life.

Come drums beating a new life.

Come life we need you as she cremates the air,

folds herself into the passion of a butterfly.

Shani, Shani, Shani, my daughter,

woman, sister, teacher, la mujer de todos los pasados,

woman in the fullness of time,

know that nothing is ever lost. forgotten.

I see you walking on morning tiptoes,

your brown eyes trailing evening stars.”

Other incredible testimony from all over the world in support of the Barakas was read during the “acknowledgments, including comments from Mayor Sharpe James, Rev. Herbert Daughtry, Congressman Donald Payne, Joanne Watson, Rev. Dr. William Howard Jr., Max Roach, Lucille Clifton, Jayne Cortez, Ntozake Shangé and Jose Cruz, among others. Also in attendance were well-known authors from Shani's generation, including Tony Medina, Kevin Powell, Ewuare Osayande and Asha Bandele.

Back at the Baraka house, posters of Shani adorned the lampposts outside, which read, “Not Just Another Short Story” and “I Know That You All Loved Me.” Just inside the house, the sound of African drums could be heard emanating from the living room, where three male friends of the Barakas were playing. At the front door, a woman by the name of Pat stood to greet relatives, guests, well-wishers, mourners and other friends, all of whom were welcomed to help themselves to a plate a food, water, ginger ale or a seat in the house. In the dining room, poet Ted Wilson sat next to seasoned author Vertamae Grosvenor, a cultural correspondent for NPR, and musician John Hicks, who later got up to play the piano in the middle of the floor. Directly across from the piano sat a tiny altar built in memory of Shani that was adorned with flowers, awards, sympathy cards, letters and pictures.

As the sound of African drums began to pick up in pace (evoking the spirit of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. DuBois and David Walker, among numerous other ancestors) and quicken the spirit of elders, young persons, relatives and friends present in the Baraka home, all began to make their way toward the living room, where they would gather round in a healing circle to clap, dance, shout with joy and help to provide Shani a safe passage back home.

Just then, Amiri and Amina Baraka, who have been married for over 35 years and, most recently, read their work together at ''Poetry Ona MOVE,'' entered the house with their poet and sister-friend Sonia Sanchez following not too far behind, along with other members of the Baraka family who had recently returned from Shani's interment at Fairmont Crematory.

Noticing the irresistible sound of the African drum, as well as the healing circle, which was already being formed in their living room, poet-husband-father-brother-warrior-teacher Amiri Baraka, along with poet-wife-mother-activist-sister-warrior-teacher Amina Baraka, willfully stepped inside. For the ancestors were calling, beckoning them to welcome Shani's spirit back home.

After Amiri reached on top of his living room mantel for Shani’s picture, he then greeted everyone from within the circle, raising her picture up high, showing all who had eyes and ears free enough to listen a beautiful photograph of his youngest daughter.

“Remember Shani!” Baraka said.

And Amina was right there with him. At the funeral services earlier, she cried while laying her weeping body across her daughter in her casket. But now, in the living room of her own home, something under her feet was tickling her, causing her to move and to dance.

Those who were gathered around Amina stood by, clapping and sometimes dancing, too, as they chanted, ''Shani! Shani! Shani!'' For they too knew that Shani's awesome spirit had indeed entered the room to dance and join them in celebration.

After the crowd shouted: “We love you. We miss you, Shani,” silently or out loud, Amina gracefully lifted and outstretched her hands toward the Lord, in the middle of the healing circle. And it was clear to all who were in attendance that Amina knew and had received the news: Her baby, her youngest daughter, Shani Isis Makeda Jones Baraka, who she had buried only an hour ago, had finally made it. She arrived safely to become one of our ancestor spirits, whose short time spent with us here on earth is destined to touch many lives.

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Jamie Walker is a freelance writer, Ph.D. student in the Department of English at Howard University and author of “101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves: A Gift for Women of All Ages” (Xlibris 2002). She can be reached at www.jamiewalker.org or via e-mail at jamiedwalker@yahoo.com.