Carole Klokkevold

75, retired bookkeeper, Albany

My first protest was a civil rights march from the UC Berkeley campus to Oakland. It was probably in the fall of 1963 or spring 1964. I carried a sign with the names of the four little girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing. I still have that sign. I was thinking that I should put Black Lives Still Matter on the back if I ever feel comfortable going out again.

I’m hopeful things can change. The Confederate statues are coming down, and police are being held accountable. I believe what Martin Luther King Jr. said about the arc of the universe being long but bending toward justice. I’ve seen change, but it takes a long time.

Janetta Johnson

55, executive director of the TGI Justice Project; cofounder of the TAJA Collation and the Compton Transgender Cultural District, San Francisco

I moved to San Franciso in 1997 and was adopted by Miss Major GriffinGracy, a longtime transgender advocate. She politicized me. The trans community was not big on taking to the streets. So much of our work then was focused on our survival.

There’s a part of the present moment that feels good. We’re seeing a lot of growth, but it also shows us that there’s still a lot of need. The murder of George Floyd mobilized a lot of people, but it was the murders of Black trans women that sent the trans community into the streets.

I feel confident about the changes that are going to come. There’s no movement without Black trans women.

Peter Haberfeld

78, retired attorney, Oakland

I was arrested for the first time at Sproul Hall at Berkeley during the Free Speech protests in 1964 and marched against the Vietnam War in ’65 and ’66. Later I was a poll watcher for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Holmes County, Miss., where I was beaten, arrested and charged with assault on a “peace officer.”

This feels like a watershed moment. It’s exhilarating that there are so many determined people angry at the system. People are more informed now than they were in the 1960s. We owe a lot to Black scholarship and journalism. I’m confident that there will be a backlash. There will always be high points and low points. It’s important not to get discouraged.

Billy X Jennings

69, retired longshoreman, historian for the Black Panther Party, Sacramento

I was born in 1950 in Hobson City, Ala., the only township in the state where Blacks could vote. We shopped at a Sears that had a Blacksonly entrance. I understood what was happening at a very young age.

I was in Oakland when Huey Newton went on trial. I knew the Panthers wanted Black men to be exempt from the military, so I joined. We never thought we could overthrow the government with armed force, but we knew that we could educate people.

This is a special moment. People are tearing down Confederate statues. That’s a leap in consciousness. The situation today has its roots in what we were doing then. The legacy of the Black Panther Party is never going to die.