60 years after Civil Rights movement, activism is alive

Advocacy groups challenge N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper

Since the May 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, at least 14,000 protestors have been arrested across the United States, and 20 demonstrators have been killed.

Another 48 unarmed people of color were killed by police in 2020, according to Mapping Police Violence.

This fight for racial equity, police reform and government accountability is reminiscent of a historic protest that called for similar action — the sit-in movement of the 1960s.

Although 60 years have since passed, the use of police force and threats of incarceration are still used as weapons against peaceful protests. Reports of police officers dispersing large crowds with tear gas, chokeholds and the firing of rubber bullets have been widespread, even as some cities proposed neck restraint and tear gas bans.

The struggle continues.

The 60th Anniversary

Greensboro, North Carolina, the third-most populous city in the state, is no stranger to civil unrest. The Greensboro Four was a quartet of North Carolina A&T State University students who were brave enough to demand desegregation during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

On Feb. 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond sat at a lunch counter inside the F. W. Woolworth Company store and waited to be served. When that didn’t happen, students from N.C. A&T and surrounding campuses joined them for each day of protest.

Lewis Brandon III, former vice-president of Greensboro CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), was one of the students on the frontlines of the sit-ins. As a community leader, he recalled the mass arrests of students.

“Some were housed in jails in High Point, Guilford County, the National Guard armory … and the old polio hospital, where they detained over 700 students,” Brandon said. “[The police] got to a point where they would detain protesters, drive them around the corner and drop them off.”

In June 1963, 278 people were arrested in Jefferson Square downtown. Protesters were charged with obstructing traffic after attempts to integrate two movie theaters and a cafeteria.

Demonstrators were met with counter-protesters, most notably members of the Ku Klux Klan, and with reporting by white-owned local media outlets that portrayed protesters as menacing, rather than peaceful.

According to the June 7, 1963 edition of the Greensboro Daily News: “A shouting, chanting, hand clapping mob of Negro demonstrators turned Jefferson Square into a nightmare scene as they swarmed onto the street, sat down and refused to move.”

Trayvon Generation

While not as many arrests were made during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Greensboro, the spirit of social dissent was all the same.

“This has been years in the making,” said Love Caesar, a Greensboro native and protester. “This is my generation’s sit-in moment.”

Caesar, 21, and so many of her peers are known as the “Trayvon Generation,” a term coined by poet and author Elizabeth Alexander to describe the tragic kinship of young people who lived through the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and so many others. These stories helped shape their worldview and serve as constant reminders that they too could be victims of anti-Black racism.

“I was a freshman in high school when I learned George Zimmerman had been acquitted in Trayvon’s murder case, and the anger I felt is still very vivid,” Caesar said.

Caesar recalled watching CNN with family when the news broke and trying to hide her tears from her parents.

Such experiences by 20-somethings across the nation helped fuel the development and growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Black Lives Matter organization was created by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi after the ruling in the Trayvon Martin case. The organization celebrated its six-year anniversary on July 13, 2020.

“I didn’t want George Zimmerman to be the period to the story,” Khan-Cullors wrote on the official site. “I didn’t want his name to be the name held up over and over again by the media, by his fellow white supremacists.”

What’s next?

The very public death of George Floyd occurred in late May 2020, during Memorial Day weekend, sparking protests that continued around the country through the July 4 weekend and into late summer. Still, some activists complained that Black Lives Matter content had gone missing from social channels.

Conversely, on March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was fatally shot in her home by Louisville Police who forced entry into her home using a “no knock” warrant. In September 2020, a grand jury indicted former officer Brett Hankison with wanton endangerment because the bullets fired were a danger to Taylor’s neighbors. No one has been arrested for the death of Breonna Taylor.

Black and brown people are used to hearing phrases such as, “We have a long way to go” and “Change doesn’t happen overnight,” but something about this movement seems different.

Taylor’s killers have not been held accountable, but with unanimous support from the Metro Council, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer signed “Breonna’s Law,” banning no-knock warrants and requiring officers to wear body cameras when conducting searches.

Similar versions of “Breonna’s Law” have been proposed in at least 33 states.

The Los Angeles City Council cut $100 million from the LAPD budget amid calls to defund police. Representatives from BLM LA outlined a plan to reinvest that money into mental health, housing and public health care programs.

And 10 months after the killing of George Floyd, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

At least 1,360 or 40 percent of counties nationwide reported a Black Lives Matter protest, according to New York Times data. Last year’s Black Lives Matter protests generated more media coverage than any movement in the past 50 years.

The media industry is witnessing another cultural watershed moment.

In the way #MeToo reshaped newsrooms and other industries, sparked debate and publicized allegations against powerful people, Black Lives Matters could have a similar legacy, according to people such as Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Many companies publicly stated “Black Lives Matter,” or donated to BLM and historically black colleges and universities and seemed willing to at least have the conversation about systemic racism.

Overall, the activism seems to be working.

After record voter turnout, Georgia turned blue, with many formerly red suburbs voting for Democrat Joe Biden for president.

Later, the state elected two Democrat senators in historic run-off elections.

America appeared to be headed toward more bipartisanship. A Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol failed to overturn the election results and even caused some Republican leaders to condemn its own party members for their part in the violence, which seemed to have been directed by former President Donald Trump.

But pretty quickly, Republicans began taking actions that impose more restrictions on voting.

More than 250 pieces of legislation have been proposed in 43 states -- led by Texas and Georgia -- to restrict access to the ballot. The measures disproportionately impact people of color, and have been called flatly racist by voting rights advocates such as Georgia’s Stacey Abrams.

Georgia passed voting provisions in March that include restricted access to absentee ballots, new strict ID requirements for absentee voting, and the criminalization of passing out food and water to voters waiting in line--some Georgians waited 10 hours to vote in 2020.

Ifill underscored this one step forward, two steps backwards struggle.

"It’s not a win,” Ifill wrote in a tweet, “if this time next [year] we have Juneteenth off; politicians are saying “Black Lives Matter;” Lift Every Voice plays at NFL games, & [Mississippi] has a new flag, but we have no new tools, laws or investment for ending voter suppression & educational, economic, criminal injustice.”