‘FATHER FORGIVE THEM’

Once, when George Jefferson was a college student in California, he rolled up to a party with several friends just as people rushed to leave. Sirens blared.

“I hear, ‘Get out of the car,’ and so I swing my door open. I look to my left and there is the barrel of a gun pointed in my face,” said Jefferson, who is 28 and now a fourth-grade teacher in Kansas City, Mo. “And I am like cold sweating, it’s not visible, but I feel it. My heart is racing.

He said, ‘I said don’t get out of the car.’ And at that point I realized I misheard this cop.”

He was let off with a stern warning to follow police instructions. But his unease grew after another encounter with police soon afterward, in which a friend was pulled over and forced to sit on the curb. Police said the car’s tag was expired; his friend argued. The advice they got was to file a complaint.

“But that didn’t address the feelings and dehumanization that came with it,” Jefferson recalled. His experiences led him to protest, teach his students about race, demand change.

In his classroom, he has posted pictures of unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., where Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a white officer in 2014 sparked intense protests. He has asked students for their observations, and assigned books, such as One Crazy Summer, which is set in Oakland, Calif., in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Fred Hampton was one of two Black Panther Party leaders killed in a 1969 police raid in Illinois; in February, Jefferson had his face tattooed on his arm. He plans to add to another tattoo — a line from scripture, Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” It’s a reminder to fight for equality.

“That,” he said, “is a life worth living.”

(AP/Charlie Riedel) George Jefferson protests the death of George Floyd during a rally at city hall in downtown Kansas City, Mo., on June 5. Jefferson, a fourth-grade teacher, was protesting in response to his own experiences with the police which has also caused him to address racism in his classroom.