Frank Gottie
mental health resources for both the police and the communities they are entrusted with protecting.
Mark Ravi
Ravi, 39, has been organizing with various groups in Memphis in earnest since 2016, when help was needed for civic actions for protests at Graceland and the Valero refinery in South Memphis.
He has lived in Memphis since he was three years old. He said his role in civil disobedience actions has evolved over the years from his initial starting point as a legal observer. He is an organizer with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens and president of Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, among other community-focused organizations.
The past year of Ravi’s life was quiet, he said, until the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the vigilante slaying of Ahmaud Arbery sparked protests across the nation.
With a fresh wave of first-timers taking to Memphis streets to protest violence against black bodies, Ravi, like others, has felt compelled to keep watch over protests, providing guidance and a watchful eye.
He said he’s encouraged by how many have taken up the cause, but doesn’t want citizens to be overwhelmed by protests, which are sometimes marked with tension between citizens and law enforcement.
“A lot of people can be scared of actions, but we don’t want that,” Ravi said, “We want everyone to feel they have a place in this movement.”
Devante Hill
Hill, a senior pastor at One Church Memphis, has been leading Black Lives Matter marches in Memphis every evening since May 28. The marches, which usually feature Hill leading chants in front of hundreds of protesters winding through Downtown streets, have stopped at nearly every historic marker of the Civil Rights Era in the Downtown area.
For more than a week, protests led by Hill, 27, have been guarded by law enforcement, with intersections blocked off for marchers and police largely hanging back from the crowds. He has emphasized the protests as examples of peaceful demonstrations for the rest of
Gottie, 37, is a community activist that has also been a nightly fixture during the Black Lives Matter protests as of late. Over the years, the 37-year-old activist has cut his own path as the founder of the organization “Put Dem Guns Down and Fight Like a Man,” an anti-gun violence campaign. He’s been known to appear in the aftermath of a Memphis homicide, bullhorn in hand, pleading for an end to violence within the community.
Like other organizers in today’s protests, Gottie was present for the Black Lives Matter protest that shut down that Hernando de Soto bridge for hours in July 2016. Since that protest, he has kept a dual focus on police brutality and advocacy for anti-gun violence.
In the nightly protests as of late, Gottie, whose birth name is Frank Gibson, can often be seen within the crowds of hundreds, seemingly keeping watch over events as they unfold.
Tucker Dunaway
Tucker Dunaway remembers the specific instance from his childhood that later prompted him to become interested in activism.
He was about 14 years old, playing with a black BB gun in his backyard when he accidentally set off the house’s alarm system and the police arrived.
He turned around, with what looked like a real gun pointed at the police.
“They said, ‘Hey kid, how are you?’” Dunaway remembers.
Also six years ago, another little boy was playing with a replica toy gun in Cleveland, Ohio: Tamir Rice. When an officer arrived, Rice was killed within seconds.
“They didn’t greet him with the same smile,” Dunaway said. “They greeted him with a bullet and now he’s dead and I’m not. In my heart, I know the only thing I did different from him that day was be white. That’s why I’m here.”
Dunaway has participated in most of the marches protesting the death of George Floyd since they began in Memphis. He’s not interested in holding the megaphone, he said, but when moments become tense, he often moves to where the conflict is thickest.
There’s an image circulating on Twitter that shows him wrapping his arms around a black protester as the two of them are trapped against a police car and surrounded by mounted police. The other protester was pinned between the horses and the car while being told to move out of the way, Dunaway said.
“They didn’t treat me like that, so I went up there and hugged him, and I was going to be there right with him no matter what happened,” Dunaway said.
A 20-year-old college student from Memphis, Dunaway said he would be doing his city a disservice not to join the protesters.
“If I can take some pepper spray or a baton or a riot shield before one of my black brothers and sisters out here, I’ll do that in a heartbeat,” Dunaway said. “They’ve been facing oppression at the hands of the country that they built.”
Darin Abston Jr.
If someone is standing at parade rest shouting in a police officer’s face, it’s probably Darin Abston Jr.
“They need to see righteous anger,” Abston said. “I am not kneeling anymore.”
The head of the Memphis People Coalition and a member of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Memphis, Abston, 28, is a former member of the U.S. Air Force.
Since protests broke out in Memphis over police brutality and the death of George Floyd, Abston has marched, participated in a rolling bridge blockade and led a shutdown of Germantown Parkway near the Agricenter.
On the night of May 30, after a protest ended, Abston saw a group of young black men being bothered by a police officer on Beale Street, he said. When he interrupted, the officer called for backup — and said that “white life matters more than a black life,” Abston said.
Abston said that interaction is what resulted in a second protest breaking out that night, one that resulted in his arrest and the arrest of several others.
Abston was arrested after hopping over a police barrier, then walking back and forth between police and the barrier. He was charged with disorderly conduct, obstruction of a highway or passageway and resisting official detention.
Another evening, Abston confronted officers at 201 Poplar, his face inches away from theirs.
And on Wednesday, he demanded that an officer give him an apology for having previously “tried to kill” him.
When Abston does that — puts his face inches away from the officer’s and starts to shout — he’s usually fired up by something, he said. It’s also a strategy.
“I know for a fact I have a right to protest. I can yell all night long. You can yell to the top of your lungs. They literally break and cannot hold their composure. They break and get physical, and that proves it right there,” he said. “I’m a man of the military. I’ve had guns in my face and I can hold my composure. That’s exactly what our uniforms need to have.”
There are other moments during the protests when Abston focuses on protecting others: Helping a teargassed woman to safety, putting himself between protesters and police after damage was caused to a convenience store.
That’s particularly important to him, he said. “I literally fought for this country,” Abston said. “I know as a fact that as an activist that is what I want to do. I want to protect all. If you are an American, I love you. I don’t care what you have done before. I am not a judge, you are an American. I love you.”