While he was silently battling colon cancer diagnosed in 2016, Chadwick Boseman would go out in public and the internet tore him apart. 😤 Photos of his thin body turned into memes, mockery, insults. People who had never known him called him careless, a drug addict, unrecognizable. No one knew — because he chose not to say it — that every day he kept filming, recording, and appearing in public was a victory wrested from the disease.
Chadwick filmed Black Panther, Avengers, and Da 5 Bloods between chemotherapy sessions. He did not do it for money or fame: he did it because he understood that his image on screen mattered to millions of children who needed to see themselves represented in a hero. He kept working with a dignity that most of his critics will never have. 🖤
He died on August 28, 2020, at 43 years old. The same people who insulted him over his weight turned those photos into tributes overnight. If this story leaves us with anything, it is a brutal lesson: you never know what someone is carrying. Never. 😔