For eight minutes, a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the neck of 46-year-old George Floyd as he cried out “I can’t breathe.” Video of Floyd's death spread throughout social media. Calvert White, an Alcorn State University student from Clinton, says the video was just another example of police brutality against Black Americans. White says “At this point, I’m kinda desensitized because this isn’t something new. This isn’t some sort of shocking revelation. This isn’t some new footage that I’ve seen. So while it is sad, it’s nothing new, you know?”
White is with Black Lives Matter Mississippi. He’s helping organize a protest in Jackson outside the Governor’s Mansion this weekend. He says his great grandfather was a freedom rider in the 1960s, fighting against segregated public buses. White says it’s just as important now to fight for the rights of others, especially those here in Mississippi. He says “That situation isn’t isolated. It’s a system that was created not with African Americans in mind but money. We are just trying to reiterate the fact that Mississippi is no stranger to racial injustice.”
The actions of young protestors across the country helped push for the arrests of the four officers involved in Floyd’s killing. But Robert James, President of the N A A C P in Mississippi, says young activists should be prepared to fight for the long haul. James says “Things are not gonna change by remaining silent, but I think when we keep the pressure on and we keep our voices out there, continuing to protest in a peaceful way, people will hear our voice. And eventually things will change. It’s not going to happen overnight, but things will change.”
Protests across the country have seen outbreaks of violence and looting while protests in Mississippi have remained peaceful. Governor Tate Reeves said Monday that he supports the first amendment right to protest, but he says those who seek to incite violence while protesting will be stopped. “There is no place for the anarchists and there is no place for the antagonist here in Mississippi," says Reeves. "Any efforts to do so will be overwhelmed. I am not threatening. I am promising that the full force of our state will be ready and willing to defend our communities.”
The past week has seen heavy debate over peaceful versus violent protests. Brandon Jones is Policy Director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. He’s concerned that the reason behind the protests is being lost. Jones says “Perhaps maybe more than focusing on the protests themselves and trying to create too much fluster over how those are being executed or how we might say they can be improved upon, looking deeply at the issues that are being raised." He says the issues of discrimination and unfair treatment of minorties today are nothing new in Mississippi. “We still see an extreme mass incarceration problem. We still have many working families that are unable to find insurance because for political reasons we’ve failed to expand Medicaid like so many other states have, even conservative ones. We still have inequity in our school system. These are all issues that were prevalent even as far back in Mississippi as 1964.”
Organizations like the NAACP have been fighting issues of discrimination and civil rights for decades. Robert James says the change necessary to fix these problems is still going to take some time. “So we’ve got 111 years of fighting this and that shows you that we got a long way to go even after what Dr. King has done to fight for our rights," says James. "We still haven’t arrived to the place that we need to be. But you can see from where we are in our society today that we’re a long way from walking in unity to accomplish the ultimate goal that all of us will be treated equal.”
Protestors say they will be walking in unity this Saturday in Jackson, marching for justice for George Floyd and the countless others before him.
