Protests of today echo demonstrations of past
This isn’t the first time that Chattanooga has seen civil unrest.
Today as protesters march downtown and through parks, they pass over the Walnut Street Bridge, where Ed Johnson, a black man, was lynched 114 years ago. Today’s demonstrations echo a long history of protesting the treatment of black people in the area and country.
Activists and concerned citizens march after a string of police brutality cases, most recently the case of George Floyd — a black man who died in police custody after
spending nearly nine minutes with his neck pinned under the knee of a white officer in Minneapolis, pleading that he couldn’t breathe.
Sixty years ago during the civil rights era, people demonstrated for the same foundational rights of fair and equal treatment for black Americans.
LOOKING BACK
In 1960, black Howard High School students lined “whitesonly” lunch counters to fight for integration.
“200 Negro Students Sit Down at 4 Stores,” the headlines from the Chattanooga Free Press read on Feb. 23, 1960.
Joanne Favors and her classmates know what it’s like to make the history and change many are now marching for in 2020. She was a senior at Howard when she decided to join her classmates to take a stand for what they believed in, despite the likelihood of violent opposition.
According to the newspaper coverage of the multiple days of sit-ins, the teenagers faced jeers and food thrown from white onlookers. Chattanooga had become the first city to use fire hoses on protesters, six years earlier.
“We felt that we were being mistreated by not being able to [eat at certain businesses,]” Favors said. “[Protesting] helped me to know that change could occur. I’ve lived 77 years, almost 78 years, and have seen significant changes. Some didn’t last and some did, but I’ve seen significant changes.”
After the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Chattanooga headlines seemed as if they were ripped from the pages of today’s papers. Protests were launched, curfews were set, and six days after King’s death, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed.
Even since the ’60s, Chattanooga has had its share of outcry when it comes to police violence and misconduct, including the recent allegations and lawsuits against Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Daniel Wilkey, claiming he mishandled traffic stops and a 2004 case with multiple similarities to that of Floyd.
In January of that year, Leslie Vaughn Platter, a Chattanooga black man, died in police custody of “positional asphyxia during physical restraint” after sustaining multiple injuries during his arrest, which the coroner ruled as a homicide.
The four officers involved took temporary leaves of absence and were reinstated after a week, according to a report in the Chattanooga Times Free Press on March 27, 2004.
The incident didn’t generate protests like those seen today, but it did result in community backlash and a $1.5 million settlement with the man’s family.
LOOKING FORWARD
When Favors looks at the movements of today compared to her own experiences and those of her peers, she marvels at the diversity of current protests and the way people are able to communicate effectively to the masses.
“I’m just really amazed at their persistence,” she said. “They’re not just going one time and going home and forgetting about it. They’re very persistent in what they’re doing.”
Local pastor Charlotte Williams, who looks back at how integral faith communities were to the movements in the ’60s, hopes today’s demonstrations will be a part of history as she and other protesters advocate against decades of police brutality and inequity that have continued, even 400 years after the start of American slavery.
“This has been ongoing,” Williams said. “What we’ve seen with Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, those sorts of things were everyday occurrences, so it’s not new for us. For 400 years, America has had its knee on the black community. For 400 years, we have been shouting, ‘I can’t breathe.’”
While stemming from the pain of continued injustice, the demonstrations give Williams hope for true change.
“You see all across [the world] people are saying enough is enough,” she said. “You’re seeing people come on one accord, you’re seeing inter-generational [collaborations] … and it’s a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful day. And I’m just so happy that I’ve been able to live to be a part of it.”
The current protests appear to be effecting change, even in Chattanooga as new “duty to intervene” policies arise and officials begin talks of evaluating the role that police play in local communities.
But as ripples of change happen, Favors hopes that history won’t ever forget the protests of yesterday and of today.
“People tend to forget,” she said. “And I want people to remember the young people [and] what they are doing now, to remember the effect that this has had by having been abused by the police.
“Social injustice is still there,” she said, “and it’s going to take a long time to completely erase it, so [not forgetting] should be a part of our lives.”