An NJ mayor remembers his murdered sister who learned love hard | Opinion

Twenty years ago, my sister, Shani Baraka, was murdered, and we are still dealing with this, even as I write these words.

Shani was my younger sister. She was a fighter, courageous, and an athlete. A better one than I was for sure.

When I was a kid playing Little League, I’d go out to a game and my mother would say, “Take Shani with you.”

My oldest brother taught her to play basketball and she excelled at that, too.

She was a community person, a consummate Newark girl. That’s the way we were raised. To love this city and work to make it better.

She was a teacher of science and language arts at Vailsburg Middle School, and a girls’ basketball coach at Shabazz High School and helped them win a state championship.

As a player at University High, she got to the finals, then rewrote the record books for the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association while at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., where she graduated Magna cum Laude.

There is so much more I could say and still not capture the essence of Shani.

Read full article on mosaic.nj.com