About 200 students — black, white, male, female — marched from Greene Street to the Statehouse in a line that stretched a city block the first week of December 2014. They started in complete silence but, as they drew closer, they began their simple, four-word chant: “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
They were protesting the events in Ferguson, Missouri, in which Michael Brown, a black man, was killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. An interest group composed of members of between 30 to 40 student organizations organized the march, which followed a forum on the incident.
When the group reached their destination on the Statehouse steps, they listened to poems, read names of black people killed by police since summer 2014 and had a four and a half minute silence for the four and a half hours Brown lay dead in the street.
Jon McClary, event organizer and third-year public health student, simply pointed behind him to the 200 students that had come out when asked if he thought the forum and protest had been successful.
“We have reached and pulled so many areas of campus that it was bound to be successful,” he said. “I think it’s a good stepping point in the right direction and shows that people are really excited about change.”
The protest ended with Courtland Thomas, another organizer of the event, encouraging the protestors to use the pain they were experiencing positively.
“Tonight we should leave here determined, educated, aware, empowered,” Thomas said. “It’s up to us to turn the pain that we’re feeling from all the lives that have been lost, turn that pain into promise for the future.
Read the full version of this article, originally published in 2014.