Accounts of the death of Amadou Dillou, an immigrant from Guinea, killed by four police officers in New York City, have focused on the extraordinary fact that 41 bullets were fired at an unarmed man standing in a door way. For PNS commentator Mae Jackson, the only possible response is rage, a rage she must try to put aside long enough to write about it and not go crazy. Jackson is a poet and community activist who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Last night I tossed and I turned trying to get the image of Amadou Dillou's mother out of my mind -- her youthful face tear-streaked, and the cry "Amadou" caught in her stomach trying to make it to her throat for release. A mother's cry.

I have heard so many cries of pain -- she an African, me an African American. But it would not go away. All night I tried to manage my rage at yet another black youth being gunned down -- gunned down worse than an animal this time around.

I say worse than an animal because my daughter Njeri is now a veterinary surgeon, African-American , straight from the bowels of the so-called ghetto, who specialized in "Wild Life Medicine."

Njeri was taught how to shoot, or more specifically how to "put down," an animal and when we discussed the shooting of Amadou Diallo, guns "fired at close range 41 times... 19 bullets finding their mark," she informed me that it would not take 19 bullets to put down the biggest baddest animal in the jungle, and she ought to know.

Ten years ago when Njeri entered her first year of college, she went with the memory of Yusef Hawkins, a neighborhood youngster near her age who traveled to Bensonhurst one innocent night with a few of his homies to answer a "car for sale" ad. Yusef never made it. A group of Italian (and other) youth shot him to death.

Njeri and I grieved. We controlled and managed our rage, got on each other's nerves and contained our anger. We had to get along. She had to go to college and I had to work to send her there. Edward Koch was the Mayor of New York City and David Dinkins was running against him.

I took my daughter to Bensonhurst on a march to protest the killing of Yusef Hawkins called by the Rev. Al Sharpton. I wanted her to return to a community that had scared the hell out of her -- out of all of us. Some years earlier, she had joined a gymnastic team in that area with aspirations of participating in the upcoming world Olympics. One day on her way to practice a group of young and old Italian boys and men confronted us after we got off of the subway train, surrounded us and followed us for six or seven blocks on foot and in cars, yelling out "niggers, dirty niggers go home!"

Njeri went into shock, I went into "civil rights replay" -- walked with my head erect, straightened my back. Two weeks earlier my mother was walking down the avenue in Bensonhurst while Njeri was attending her class, and she was surrounded by a group of young Italian boys and men. My mother went into "southern history" -- that is, she pulled out an ice pick and started sticking.

The crowd disappeared. My mother understood. She had never studied at any university, had not traveled far or read much philosophy. But she was part Indian, I am told, and perhaps she remembered something Crazy Horse said on a day not so different from the one she was having. A day when, after he was tired of being tired, he said out loud to himself and the few who were brave enough to remain around him, "Mount up. The bow is taut, it's a beautiful day to die."

Ice pick in hand, my mother was prepared to die in defense of herself and her granddaughter, in Bensonhurst, USA, a few years before Yusef Hawkins.

No. I am, we are not strangers to violent acts of white racism that seem to run in the veins of those who shoot people more times then they would shoot an animal.

I know the truth. I also know history. But even if I did not know truth or history, common sense tells me what my mother knew -- no people are freed by mere words, or desire. They are freed when they "recognize the extent of their oppression and organize against it."

There is something terribly wrong when a Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, a Gotti, can be taken by police/law enforcement, peacefully -- without a hair being disturbed, and a young black man, 21 years of age is shot at 41 times.

In the words of the old Negro Spiritual, I've "been in the storm too long." I am too old, too weary, too tired of weeping for our sons and daughters to just let it be. I hear that cry, "Amadou." I look around my apartment trying to find a reason for not going crazy.