‘THIS NIGHT DID BREAK ME’
Protester speaks after May Beale Street arrest
“I love this city. Everything about it ... Having to relearn my landmarks in a place where I was viciously attacked is hard.” Victoria Jones
After years of marches and demonstrations against police brutality and Confederate monuments, Victoria Jones knew that choosing to attend a protest meant facing the possibility of arrest.
Still, Jones said she never expected that when it finally happened, getting arrested would be as humiliating and dehumanizing as her experience was during the early hours of the morning on May 31.
“The first few weeks were really spent trying to convince everyone around me that I was OK,” Jones said on Aug. 21 in her first media interview since her arrest. “But most recently, I had to accept that this night did break me in a lot of ways.”
Jones is founder of The Collective, an art gallery and gathering space in Orange Mound for Black artists.
She was among about 150 protesters and onlookers who gathered along Beale Street in one of the many demonstrations sparked in Memphis and around the the country in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the globe have watched a video of her arrest captured by a Commercial Appeal reporter.
They listened as an unidentified officer yelled “Somebody get the girl in the gray hoodie” and watched as Jones was brought to the ground, eventually disappearing behind a wall of police horses and officers outfitted in helmets, shields and batons.
A demeaning night
After the video ended, her experience only worsened, she said.
Jones recounted being marched in handcuffs down Beale Street with most of her body exposed after the zipper on her sweatshirt was broken when she said she was tripped then pushed by officers.
“I’m bending over weeping at this point asking someone to pull my bra up and they refused,” she said, her voice cracking with tears. “Nobody would do it ... I felt so small and I couldn’t do anything. I’m getting walked down the street with my breasts out.”
Finally, after being steered past dozens of officers and others being arrested, one officer — a black woman — came and held her zip-up hoodie closed to cover her.
But that wasn’t the end of the demeaning night.
Jones said as she wept, all she could see while being led into a paddy wagon were the eyes of her roommate, who was arrested while trying to protect her, through a small rectangular hole in a neighboring cell and eyes and feet of strangers already on board.
She said the female officer holding the hoodie closed was not allowed on the wagon with her so she was briefly exposed again.
When Memphis police put her in the small cell and gave her a shirt so she could cover herself more fully, she overheard officers make jokes about whether the shirt would fit.
“I was just like ‘Y’all are taking out all the stops and trying to make me as small as possible,’” she said she thought at the time. “And it works. They’ve got it down to a science at this point.”
When Jones was finally taken to Shelby County’s Jail East Women’s Facility, she was determined to hold tight to the little dignity she had left.
“The only thing just running through my brain was ‘I’m not crying in here,’” she said. “I’m not going to give them that last part of me.”
Jones was arrested on misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and rioting.
She was released the next day. Within three weeks, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office dropped her charges.
When Jones was released from jail, she said she collapsed into a heap of pent-up tears in the parking lot as she met her friends waiting to pick her up.
The “case was dismissed because we would not have been able to carry our burden of proof,” said Larry Buser, spokesperson for the DA’S office.
Many other protesters still face charges.
MPD disputes claims
Days after the arrest, Memphis Police Department Director Michael Rallings held a joint press conference with Mayor Jim Strickland.
Speaking generally about MPD’S policing of protesters, Rallings said: “I need everybody to understand, if the police move in to make arrests, if individuals do not obey our order to disperse, an arrest is never going to be pretty.”
In an interview with The Commercial Appeal after the press conference, Strickland stopped short of calling the actions of the MPD officers inappropriate. He did, however, call for an investigation into the actions of the police officers involved.
In a statement issued Aug. 21, Lt. Karen Rudolph, MPD public information officer, said the investigation was complete and disputed Jones’ claim that she was tripped and pushed by officers.
“After a review of several body-worn cameras, it was determined that officers did not push Ms. Jones to the ground,” Rudolph said.
“Ms. Jones attempted to run from officers, at which time she tripped and fell. Officers then took Ms. Jones into custody.”
The statement went on to deny that officers initially refused to close her hoodie.
No officers will be disciplined for actions related to Jones’ arrest.
Home of the Blues
George Floyd’s final minutes of life were captured on video on May 25. Then-minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd repeatedly yelled “I can’t breathe.”
Even after Floyd stopped moving, Chauvin, hand in his pocket, did not removed his knee. Three other officers looked on but did nothing to help Floyd.
All of the officers were later fired and arrested. The video launched protests that are still ongoing in some cities. Memphis’ first protest happened on May 27.
Saturday, May 30 was Jones’ first night out. She participated in a march led by activist and pastor Devante Hill that brought more than 500 people into Downtown Memphis earlier in the night. When that ended around 9 p.m. at the National Civil Rights Museum, most people, including Jones, went home.
But around 10:30 p.m. a confrontation with police sparked a second impromptu protest at the intersection of South Main Street and Beale Street. After seeing a video from someone broadcasting live from the scene, Jones and her two roommates went back out and stayed well past midnight.
They were surprised to see so few people present just hours after hundreds had been Downtown. While police estimated the crowd at nearly 150, most people were initially onlookers, not actively participating in the protest.
“At first it was kind of jarring,” she said.
“But, for me at least, it kind of really gave purpose to why we were there. If we’re going to offer up numbers, I couldn’t think of a better place to offer them up.”
She said she wanted to be there to give support to the small group of mostly young black men who were holding the line near a police barricade sharing stories of their own traumatic experiences with law enforcement.
At one point, officers rushed their own barricades to tackle those closest to them after at least two protesters jumped over them minutes earlier but still made sure to keep more than an arms length away.
By the time officers on horses and dressed in riot gear started banging their shields with their wooden batons, yelling “move” and advancing with each strike, Jones, overcome by a flood of defiant emotion pent up after years of police killing black men and women with seemingly no consequences, said she felt rooted to the spot.
“I think what I felt was stubborn in that moment,” she said.
“All gut reaction and everything said ‘Stand for what you believe in.’ Right now, it’s ‘Stop killing us.’ If the only thing I could do is stand here and look at you in your eye, then that’s what I’m going to do until I can’t.”
As Jones was pulled to the ground and then carted off by police, the blue neon “Home of the Blues” sign that marks the iconic musical history of Beale Street cut through the darkness overhead.
Before that night, Beale Street was a place of happy memories with friends and family members for Jones.
That has changed.
“This is one of the last things I saw before I got put on the paddy wagon,” Jones said of the sign in the Aug. 21 interview, the first time she has been to Beale Street since her arrest. “I love this city. Everything about it... Having to relearn my landmarks in a place where I was viciously attacked is hard. I’m still trying to learn how to honor that.”
Individual heroes
While Jones said she supports the grassroots movement to “defund the police” that is calling for tax dollars spent on the police budget to be reallocated to pay for other community needs like education and mental health services, she has little faith that conversations happening among elected officials will lead to significant change for Memphis’ underserved neighborhoods.
“My hope is that people with resources pour into these community organizations that are trying to provide alternatives” to traditional policing, she said.
“There are a ton of organizations and folks doing really good work... I don’t
put a lot of stake in politicians but there is a lot of room for individual people to become the heroes of this story just by investing in community organizations that are doing the work.”
She sees her contribution to that work as continuing to lead The Collective.
Jones said the idea for The Collective was born when protesting in the streets started to feel inadequate.
At conception, the space that focused on the work of Black artists was a protest in itself, a place where Black joy and creativity could thrive in defiance of systemic oppression and violence.
Now, she said her perspective on her work is shifting in a fine but significant way: Now, she separates the creative space she is fostering from the idea of protest.
It’s about Black people feeling free on their own accord, not expressing joy only as a response to hate and terror.
That nuanced viewpoint is helping Jones put herself back together after months of internal darkness that followed her arrest.
“At this point for me, the protesting is low-key done,” she said.
“Not because I’ve given up but because I don’t think that’s where the work is anymore. It doesn’t even have to to be in the nonprofits. Some of these folks are meeting at Wing Factory and putting together backpack giveaways, turkey giveaways for Thanksgiving. “That’s where this work is.”
Desiree Stennett is a reporter at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached on Twitter: @desi_stennett.