Scores join Saluda march decrying racial injustice
Peaceful protest one of many around U.S. spotlighting death of man at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 25
by Larry Chowning –
The “Black Lives Matter” rally on Sunday in Saluda carried the more than 200 participants down memory lane of civil rights history in Middlesex County.
The march, prompted by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, started at Middlesex High School. That’s where, in 1963, 13 black students got off a segregated school bus as part of a court order federal mandate to integrate Middlesex County Public Schools.
The Sunday “Black Lives Matter” march ended at the Middlesex County Courthouse grounds where just across the street on July 16, 1944 Irene Morgan was physically dragged from a Greyhound bus and placed behind bars in the county jail for not going to the back of the bus to allow a white couple to sit in her seat.
The case of Morgan vs. Virginia was heard in the United States supreme court on June 3, 1946 where the court ruled on a 6-1 vote that Jim Crow state laws forcing blacks to sit in the back of interstate passenger buses was unconstitutional.
The civil rights march ended with a rally conducted right next door to the old jail building where Morgan was locked up. There is a state historical road sign in front of the courthouse commemorating Morgan’s courage as a civil rights pathfinder.
Irene Morgan and the 13 pioneer Middlesex County black students would have been proud Sunday as the courthouse grounds were filled with white and black peaceful activists demanding social change.
George Floyd died on May 25 after he was pinned facedown on the ground by Minneapolis police, handcuffed, with a white police officer pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes with three other policemen standing alongside.
Floyd called out, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” and in his final dying moments called out for help from his deceased mother.
Bystanders’ cell phone videos at the scene captured the dying words of the 6’6” Floyd, who was unarmed and did not appear to be resisting officers. Millions throughout the world later viewed the viral videos on the Internet and were united in anger. They have been participating in civil rights marches and rallies in cities and towns across America and around the world.
Their message is that an American white culture has too long denied the presence of systemic racism that has forced black families to generationally struggle to make their way in America and has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of black males by police.
Saluda rally
At the rally on Sunday, that message was loud and clear. The rally was locally organized as Middlesex County natives Lauren Wood and LaMar Gresham planned and worked with Sheriff David Bushey, members of the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors and others to stage the event.
With a police presence, the march started at Middlesex High School at noon on Sunday with more than 200 activists, most wearing masks for the COVID-19 pandemic, many displaying and waving posters and marching to the chants “No Justice, No Peace! I Can’t Breathe! and Black Lives Matter!”
Others walked with clinched fist representative of the black power movement in the 1960s when Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the podium at the 1968 Olympics after winning medals in the 200-meter sprint with heads down and fist raised high overhead.
At the rally on the courthouse grounds, the Rev. Dr. Leonard Edloe encouraged everyone of voting age to get registered and vote in the November election. Edloe, the pastor of New Hope Fellowship Church in Hartfield, recalled the days when he was a child and he would go to the courthouse in Richmond with his father to pay a poll tax so his father could vote.
He said many of those at the rally do not remember the Virginia Jim Crow law requiring a poll tax to vote used to keep poor blacks and whites from going to the polls. “My father knew how important is was to vote and the difference a vote could make in our lives,” he said. “Everyone needs to vote!”
Edloe said that COVID-19 has caused people “to look at their mortality, to look back over time and see what they should have done and what they should not have done.”
George Floyd’s death hit a nerve in the consciousness of America, said Edloe. “Thank God for technology as it showed George face down on the sidewalk pleading for his life and right before our eyes we saw his life taken away.”
Rev. Edloe suggested that if not for modern cell phone technology, George Floyd may have been a forgotten victim like so many other black men in American history who were killed by the hands of white police.
“A slave was worth more than $20,” he said. Floyd was arrested for being suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Edloe also spoke of a historical event where more than 100 blacks were lynched at one time without a trial and their bodies burned.
He spoke of the struggle black families have had surviving in America. “Slavery defied common English law that people cannot be slaves,” he said. “This country has not lived up to its oath that all men are created equal.”
Edloe encouraged all to join together to stop “the perpetual white narrative” that there is no racism in America. “Things will never change unless we know and understand that there is a problem in America,” he said.
“We are all looking for the day when all God’s children can have the American dream!” he said.
Raheem Turane of Raheem Turane Worldwide Ministries encouraged the people at the rally to become the starting point of social change in Virginia. He emphasized the movement needs to be based on the golden rule where “you love your neighbor as you love yourself. We serve a God to love one another,” he said.
“There are people who don’t believe in the narrative of systemic racism where there are social and political disparities in every institution in America,” he said. “It is here! Racism is right here!”
Gresham reminded the crowd of the significance of the Irene Morgan case and that the rally was on the very location where a civil rights act by one person’s effort helped change the world.
“This is another civil rights moment,” said Gresham. “We are not calling for a riot, we just want our country to get to the root of the problem that has been going on for generations.”
Wood, who is white, said that she and her two sons were at the rally to “help our brothers and sisters.” She said she and her sons have “white privilege” in America.
“No one is looking at me or my sons funny,” she said. “I’ve never had to worry about my sons the way black mothers have had to worry. I have not had to worry about my boys being judged by the color of their skin.”
She said this form of racism is built into the American culture and it is time to change. “George Floyd was 46 years old dying as he was crying for his mother,” she said. “Thank God for cell phones or we would have never known.
“Change must happen and it begins with me and you,” she said. “I stand in respect for black lives. This is our problem and I will fight for change with you,” she said as the crowd applauded.
A final speaker was the aunt of Marcus David Peters, a Middlesex High School graduate, who was 24 years old when he was shot and killed by a Richmond police officer on May 14, 2018 while experiencing a mental health crisis.
His family is seeking to create a “A Marcus Alert System” that would require mental health professionals to be the first responders to confirm a mental health crisis, similar to the one Peters suffered that day. The family also wants to create of an independent civilian review board with subpoena power, to receive and investigate claims for police abuse.
The rally ended with names of more than 100 black males called out who had lost their lives to questionable police actions.
The peaceful event ended at 1:30 p.m. as the crowd dispersed chanting “Black Lives Matter!”
