No one woke up Memorial Day morning 2020 thinking their world was going to change.
No one imagined that one of the most momentous periods in the long quest for racial justice in America was about to begin.
And certainly numerous teenagers and young adults across the United States couldn’t know that events were about to thrust them into positions of leadership in their town or city.
Looking back a full year, to the thunderous reaction to the killing of George Floyd while he was restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020, is to gaze at the making of history, in real time, by hundreds of thousands of people of all backgrounds as they took to the streets and to Instagram to demand justice.
Yet within those crowds and behind all those Instagram Stories were individuals, young and old, who reached beyond themselves to speak up for the dignity of all the Black men mistreated by police and to press for racial equity in their own communities.
100 voices: Police and justice for everyday Americans are needed in my town
Their words, their actions and their commitment spawned the USA TODAY Network’s Justice in My Town project, which since June 2020 has shone a spotlight in mid-sized and smaller communities on the people seeking racial progress and on what the path forward might look like.
George Floyd protests reach even small cities as America confronts systemic racism
One series of stories and videos last August elevated the voices of young activists, many of whom felt compelled by the horror of the Floyd killing to stand up and speak out.
Heart of the movement: How these 12 young activists are seeding change in their towns
Another series, last September, spoke to an older guard of civil rights leaders who remember the era of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and its aftermath, when America passed laws seeking equality yet failed to make the systemic changes needed to eradicate racism from policing, from housing and from the workplace.
These 9 activists sowed the seeds of change. Now they’re nurturing growth in young leaders
Today, as the nation examines the progress it has made over the past year on racial equity and contemplates the yawning gaps that remain, Justice in My Town revisits several of the young activists and old guard civil rights leaders. We’ve asked them to assess whether or not the momentum for change has continued or slowed, and what their own plans are to continue the fight.
When Arlette Morales heads to college next year, she plans to continue to work for her own community, and fight for racial justice.Paul Kuehnel, Paul Kuehnel
After George Floyd was killed, 17-year-old Arlette Morales of York, Pennsylvania, put out a call to action on Facebook, asking the community to gather and peacefully protest in York’s downtown. She wasn’t expecting a huge turnout, but she was hopeful that at least a few people would show interest. By the next day, over 700 people had RSVP’d.
Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? Why or why not?
“The momentum in my town for racial injustice has been yes and no. The community leaders and local organizations have been pushing and have been mobilizing the community, but certain individuals or just individuals in our town they’ve kind of treated the Black Lives Matter movement as a trend.
“A lot of posts have stopped but there are still a lot of people who push.
“The fight doesn’t stop after a verdict, the fight doesn’t stop after a few protests. It needs to keep going.”
Arlette Morales talks about how the fight for racial justice in her town
Arlette Morales answers two questions: Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? What’s next in your quest for racial justice.
Paul Kuehnel, York Daily Record
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
“Next year, I’ll be off to college and the college that I will be attending is predominantly white, and so I plan to represent my community, represent the undocumented brown women and to continue the fight.
“Fight for my parents. Fight for myself.
“Activism can be such a small thing as to stopping a joke that can hurt someone, stepping up when discrimination happens, and if I need to step up, mobilize people and push and uplift voices.”
– Reported by Jasmine Vaughn-Hall , a reporter for the USA Today Network in central Pennsylvania.
Physician assistant Rebekah Basham, the Rev. Adrian Brooks, Dr. Pearl Quartey-Kumapley and Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke open a Deaconess clinic on the campus of Memorial Baptist Church on Monday, April 5, 2021.Jon Webb / Courier & Press
Well known as an active and vocal representative of the Black community as well the city’s economically marginalized, the Rev. Adrian Brooks of Evansville, Indiana, is guided by a philosophy that includes both words and deeds.
“I realized something was getting lost in the conversation. There can be advocacy but there also has to be action,” he said last summer. “We’re not going to say, ‘this is wrong,’ without coming up with a solution.
Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? Why or why not?
“Yes, I believe that the momentum is still strong. I believe that it is more involved with policy modification, and community asset building. It may not be as visible in Evansville but the push for it is still strong.”
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
“I am working with some local companies to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to assist them in becoming more reflective our community.
“Our church and community development teams are building affordable single family houses to build wealth and prevent gentrification of our center city neighborhoods. The church and CDC partnered with Deaconess Hospital to open a health clinic on our church campus to address health disparities in the center city of Evansville.
“We are building an additional 50 apartment units because people are struggling to find affordable housing. We started a more intensive tutorial program to help our kids catch up. The pandemic caused a number of our minority children to fall behind.
“It is also important for us to continue to challenge our community to embrace diversity beyond superficiality. We also have to keep informing private sector companies that the most profitable businesses are those that totally embrace (diversity, inclusion and equity).
“Hopefully people have began to see that individual success is nothing without the collective success of the total community. “
– Reported by Mark Wilson, a reporter for the Courier-Press in Evansville, Indiana.
One year ago, Andrey Rosado began trying to sell his hometown of Erie on a project of a lifetime: achieving racial justice.
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis spurred Rosado, and so did the violent disturbance that broke out in downtown Erie the night of May 30 after the end of a peaceful protest that had focused on Floyd’s killing.
Both events convinced Rosado of the need for a peaceful effort to increase Erie’s awareness of racism and change how its police force interacts with Black residents and other people of color.
Rosado founded Erie Equal, a group that launched on social media in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and soon attracted as many as 3,000 followers on Facebook.
The momentum for racial and social justice in our town is still strong and stronger than it has been in quite some time. However, it is tough to get things done when those in power aren’t completely onboard to make the necessary changes.”
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
“The steps being planned for the next year are to put more people in positions of power who want change and want to help fight the good fight.
“We want to continue promoting individuals from younger generations for positions of power and continue to hold those in current positions of power accountable.
“We want to keep pushing for people to get registered to vote and educate themselves at the same time on who they are voting for and how it firstly impacts our community.”
– Reported by Ed Palettella of the Erie, Pennsylvania, Times-News.
Wayne Riley is the director of the Laurel County African American Heritage Center.Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal
In “some of the far, far corners of Eastern Kentucky, you will find that there are people that are as underprivileged” and marginalized as some Black communities in cities, Wayne Riley of Corbin, Kentucky, said last year. These people face similar disparities from jobs, poverty and education. “They’re pushed to the back burner, too.”
Riley, who founded the Laurel County African American Heritage Center in nearby London, said the two could make powerful allies for social justice.
“How do we bring these people together — the black people, the white people, and make a better community of people?” he said.
Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? Why or why not?
“I think the momentum is there, because a lot of the younger people are really interested in making a statement that this is not who we are, and this is not how we want to live. We’re better people.
“I really believe the younger generation has picked up the torch and is going to carry it through. It’s still going on here. Some of the young people have been having equity talks and committees, so it’s still going on here.
“Babies are not born into this world being racist people. It’s what’s been taught to them.
“People are going to still have that same mindset until we break that by having conversation, and teaching about different ways of life, and that, just because we’re different in skin tone, that doesn’t mean that we can’t hang out together and support each other.
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
We’re going to focus real hard on these issues. We’ve talked about having a Juneteenth celebration. We took a group of adults to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. When we start our youth program this summer, one of those days will be going to the Freedom Center. We talked about going to Alabama to the Rosa Parks museum.
We have to continue to do it. As I said at the Martin Luther King Day program – and I hurt a lot of feelings because I said it — but it’s just the truth: Now is not the time to be silent, now’s the time to be vocal about it. And let’s move forward with it.
If we solve some of the racial issues and racial tension, it doesn’t just help the Black community. It helps all our community, and helps us all be better people.”
– Reported by Chris Kenning, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Bertha Todd’s journey as a civil-rights advocate has always been closely linked with her career as an educator.STARNEWS FILE PHOTO
Bertha Todd’s legacy in Wilmington, North Carolina, is as a lifelong advocate for human rights and racial reconciliation. But she’s quick to point out a personal trait that has girded that work.
“First, I’m a strategist,” the 90-year-old said. “I do things in a logical sort of way.”
She is passionate in addressing injustice, but credits her success to a willingness to accept incremental change. She plays the long game.
Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? Why or why not?
“I think it’s moving forward. We’re not where we need to be. But we’re certainly far better off than we were when I moved to Wilmington from Durham in 1952.”
In terms of her work on bringing the Wilmington coup and massacre of 1898 to light during the 1990s and 2000s, “It was a wound that occurred then that did not heal properly. That deep of a wound had residual effects when I moved here. You could feel it.”
Even so, her work in bringing the events of 1898 to light “was controversial, or we would not have worked on it for 13 years.”
She persisted, because “if you don’t know your past, you are bound to repeat. Wilmington is a beautiful place, but that skeleton was still in the closet and had been for 100 years.”
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
“I don’t drive anymore, and I don’t participate in events unless they’re virtual.”
“I’m really not an activist. I’m a strategist. I said that during school desegregation. I was not out there in the streets. Let’s sit down at the table. Let’s get our commonalities, let’s not fight each other.
“It takes, to move forward, constant communication between all groups. The only way you can find out about another person is to sit down and talk with them about the issues of the day.
“There are groups out there doing that, many workshops on racial justice. More individuals are jumping on board to help with the process.”
– Reported by John Staton, an arts and entertainment reporter for the Wilmington Star News.
Joshua Shaw sits next to the Martin Luther King Jr. statute at East Street Park in Sherman on Aug. 2.Herald Democrat
People always told Joshua Shaw of Sherman, Texas, he would have a voice.
“I just did not know how it was going to come about,” he said last summer.
Churchgoers, artists and 20-somethings around Sherman know Shaw from watching him playing instruments in church, hosting parties and bringing people together for happy gatherings. When he posted on Facebook that he was going to be part of the first protest in support of George Floyd in Grayson County, the word got out and the protest picked up traction.
Thousands of citizens in Grayson County gathered in Sherman for a walk from Fairview Park to the Grayson County Courthouse on May 31, 2020. The peaceful march had police escorts, and Shaw could be heard shouting every step of the two-mile trek.
“Say his name. George Floyd.” “No justice, no peace.” “Black Lives Matter.”
Joshua Shaw had found his voice.
Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? Why or why not?
“The momentum is questionable, and that shouldn’t even be a answer honestly, but the passion and people slowly started losing the drive after elections.
“Then again, our community doesn’t have a lot of issues that comes to play being that we are a fairly peaceful community. But, we do have the good ole boy system when it comes to sports and other recreational activities.”
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
“My next step is to continue doing what I’ve been doing and contributing behind the scenes and on the mainstream.
“I’ve started a T-shirt company and am starting to use as a platform to express my opinions and beliefs on stuff that’s swept under the rug and others are afraid to speak on.
“Racism is still here, and people aren’t as bold without Trump in office when it comes to the direct hatred. I am not blaming him, but people use him as an excuse or crutch to be so blatant with it.
“I plan on holding another march real soon and hope to get people together at least once a month so we can keep the public and community up to speed on what’s going on and what we can do to better in our community.
“We want to continue to shine light on the world for the things that are to come.”
– Reported by Future Brown of The Herald Democrat in Sherman, Texas.
Jalen Elrod is working on a documentary about how Black communities are negatively impacted by gentrification.submitted
Jalen Elrod, of Greenville, South Carolina, is a community organizer and political campaign manager. His most personal campaign is against the gentrification in Greenville’s Black communities.
He and a young, independent film maker in Greenville have worked on a documentary about the gentrification happening there and “how they (Black communities) are being erased while our City Council stands by and does nothing.”
“I think if you ask your average Greenvillian how many people have been gentrified out of their community, they probably can’t name more than five,” he said. “So, what we want to do is really tell real stories and show the toll this has taken on so many people in our community, and in a way that the powers that be can’t hide from it.”
Is the momentum for racial justice in your town still strong? Why or why not?
“The momentum is not strong. It never really has been. There is just the illusion of progress. But that’s Greenville for you. Certain people help the leaders of this city present a facade to the world while the disenfranchised in our city suffer.”
What steps do you plan in the next year to continue the quest for racial justice in your town?
“Our documentary on the gentrification of the city of Greenville will drop this year. COVID-19 hindered its release last year and our ability to galvanize the community behind it.
“Also, I just became 3rd Vice Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, charged with galvanizing young voters in our state. Through this, we will spearhead a robust voter registration initiative beyond anything South Carolina has seen before.
“By getting more people to the ballot box, we can fundamentally change this state for the better.”
– Reported by Angelia L. Davis of The Greenville News in Greenville, South Carolina.
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