HBCU students turned grief into marches and rides to the polls

What happened

In the weeks before Tuesday’s midterm elections, students at historically Black colleges and universities organized marches to statehouses and polling places, Capital B News reported in a story by national education reporter Alecia Taylor. Capital B said students from North Carolina A&T State, Norfolk State, Bowie State, Alcorn State and dozens of other HBCUs have held “Blackout” and “March to the Polls” protests. Morgan State students in Baltimore planned to march on Election Day, the outlet reported.

At Jackson State in Mississippi, Capital B reported, students including Camrynn Wimberly, 22, and Jakari Holland organized an October march, which the outlet described as going to the state capitol. (WLBT reported that the students marched to the COFO Civil Rights Education Center.) Wimberly told Capital B the students were moved by the death of Nolan Wells and want “a competent and thorough investigation,” including a look at the state medical examiner. The Black Information Network and other outlets have reported that Wells was 18, that state and independent autopsies listed his cause and manner of death as undetermined, and that a Mississippi grand jury declined in September to bring charges. Those outlets said the grand jury found no credible evidence of criminal conduct. They also reported that his family and their attorney are still pressing for answers.

In Greensboro, North Carolina, thousands of students from North Carolina A&T and Bennett College marched for 40 minutes on Oct. 15 after the Guilford County Board of Elections voted earlier this year not to put a polling site on campus, according to Capital B. Citing The A&T Register, Capital B said Protect Ours, a student group not affiliated with the university, has raised money and partnered with community organizations to run shuttles to the nearest polling place, about a mile away. The article did not give the board’s reasons for its decision.

Capital B also reported that a nonprofit co-founded by Dillard University graduate Tevon Blair registered over 800 students at 10 HBCUs in under a month through its Vote HBCU program. Blair told the outlet that in past elections people kept “telling us who to vote for rather than asking us ‘Who are you and what are the issues that we care about?’” In Tallahassee, Florida A&M political science student Jayla Jones told Capital B that an older man walking past the Capitol stopped to join the students. He told her this was how his generation got people to listen.

Our reflection

Start where the students started, with grief. A Mississippi family lost an 18-year-old, and months later the official answer to how he died is still “undetermined.” Jayla Jones told Capital B it sounded familiar, and that is a particular kind of tired: being twenty years old and already standing on the same Capitol lawn where an earlier class of students stood. Camrynn Wimberly put the word rage on her sign. A lot of church people flinch at that word. I don’t think we should.

At the tomb of Lazarus, John says Jesus was “deeply moved in his spirit” (John 11:33). The Greek word there has the snort of indignation in it. He was angry at death, and he wept with the family before he told them to roll the stone away. Scripture never treats anger as the sin by itself. “Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). What matters is where it goes. Rage left alone turns into contempt, or it goes cold and becomes despair. These students carried theirs to a registration table and, in Greensboro, to a shuttle schedule.

Now the part that is about us. When the crowd was hungry, a boy brought five loaves and two fish, and Andrew looked at the lunch and asked what it was among so many (John 6:9). Plenty of us talk that way about this generation. We decided they were checked out before we asked them a single question, and Tevon Blair’s line convicts churches as much as campaigns. Jesus took the boy’s bread and gave thanks for it. Then he fed people with it. He didn’t swap it for a better offering from someone older.

Be honest about what a march can do. It doesn’t reopen a case. The grand jury has spoken, and the family is still waiting. A ballot promises nobody an outcome. Change usually looks like what Capital B described. Students in Greensboro raised money for rides to a polling place a mile away, and Blair’s group registered more than 800 young people one conversation at a time. It’s slow work, and it trains people who will still be organizing in twenty years. We The Revolt does this kind of work with youth and young adults. We will never tell a young person how to vote. We sit beside them and ask what they care about. Then we help them carry it with the fruit the Spirit grows: patience when the answer doesn’t come, self control when the anger wants to burn everything down.

Out of everyone in the story, I keep thinking about the older man who stopped. Somebody in your church or on your block is organizing right now. Ask them Blair’s question this week. Then ask what they need from you, whether that’s a ride, a room, a check or one more grown person standing beside them.

There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?

John 6:9

Source: Capital B News, “HBCU Students Are Turning Their Anger Into Action This Election”