Erica Garner, the civil rights activist and a daughter of Eric Garner, died on Saturday, two days before the New Year and in the middle of the holiday season — a time when we’re all encouraged to be with our families. It is impossible to think of her death without thinking of her father’s death, the devastation their family must feel and the ways that black families have been destroyed throughout history.

Other families could devote themselves to spending time together around tables piled with celebratory food. But the Garners had to keep vigil around a hospital bed, because Erica suffered a heart attack on Christmas Eve and spent most of last week in a coma. She died unfairly young, at 27. That’s three years after her dad died unfairly young, at 43, when Officer Daniel Pantaleo of the New York Police Department placed him in a banned chokehold.

Erica Garner is survived by her two young children. If both she and her dad had been alive this holiday season, they would have almost certainly spent it together. “He was a family man,” she said about him, in one of the last interviews she gave before her death, on the third anniversary of the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Pantaleo. “Like all the holidays, any type of events, he was always there. He always made sure you knew he supported you any way he can.”

Since the country’s founding, black families have never been able to thrive. Slavery broke them apart by allowing family members to be sold at auctions to different owners, and by prohibiting slaves from legally marrying, since slaves were classified as property, not people. Millions of black family members were killed during slavery and the lynching era, from 1877 to 1950. The modern legal system separates black families at higher rates than other families through many methods, including disparate sentencing schemes. Black defendants often receive far longer sentences than similarly situated white defendants.