The country knew Latasha Harlins primarily by the grainy image broadcasted again and again on the courtroom television and on national news networks: a tussle between Latasha and the proprietor of that Los Angeles convenience store in 1991; a harrowing bang when the shopkeeper pulled the trigger of a gun she took from beneath the counter, and fired a deadly shot into the back of Latasha’s head. The proprietor had mistakenly assumed that Latasha intended to steal a carton of orange juice, and shot her after the physical altercation that ensued, after Latasha had placed the orange juice on the counter, and after she began walking away. Though it’s been 33 years since the 15-year-old was killed, Latasha is on my mind; I recently read a chapter from Brenda E. Stevenson’s The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins for my American Studies course, History of the Cops: Racialized Policing in the U.S. Gripped by Stevenson’s recounting of Soon Ja Du’s trial — and the key role that that grainy surveillance video of the shooting played in the proceedings — I stumbled on an altogether different videographic representation of Latasha Harlins — her life, not her death: Sophia Nahli Allison’s A Love Song for Latasha (2020). In the brief documentary film, Allison practices a sort of past and present Afro-futurism that entreats us to imagine how Latasha’s young life might have bloomed. The film is palpable, dreamlike, with images of shoes tossed over telephone wires and Black girls’ gap-toothed smiles, alongside oral histories from Latasha’s cousin, Shinese, and her best friend, Ty.
