JSU students march for Nolan Wells, name other young Black Mississippians

Rally ends at 1964 Freedom Summer organizational home

Hundreds of students gathered on the Jackson State University (JSU) campus on Wednesday afternoon for a Blackout rally to call for transparency in what organizers described as the mysterious deaths of young Black people and to encourage student engagement in politics and the fight for voting rights, according to the Guardian.

As the sun began to set, the students, many of whom wore black, moved through the historically Black university’s plaza with school police and others looking on. They chanted: “Nolan Wells, Trey Reed, Tasia Fortune, Kohen Wiley, Jaylen Lewis – Black Lives Matter!” All five were young Black Mississippians — the youngest, Wiley, was one year old, and the eldest, Fortune, was 29 — who either died under suspicious circumstances or were killed by police.

The marchers ended their route at the Cofo Civil Rights Education Center on campus. The building was the organizational home for the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, a largely student-organized movement that aimed to increase Black voter participation during the Jim Crow era, and the statewide headquarters for the Council of Federated Organizations, a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress for Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Camrynn Wimberly, a JSU student and one of the organizers of the march, said the demonstration was “the first step of advocacy” and “the first step of collective action and political power.” She added that the goal was to spread the message that students “will not stand idly by as rights are stripped from us, as parents grieve, as we wonder whether or not we will be next.”

Wells, an 18-year-old Black student whose disappearance and death have received national scrutiny, is at the center of a larger movement of students at historically Black colleges and universities calling for justice and transparency. The cause and manner of his death remain undetermined, the Guardian reported. Also this week, students in the Atlanta University Center Consortium (AUC), which includes Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University (CAU) and Morehouse College, as well as Langston University, Prairie View A&M University and other schools, marched to demand answers about his death and other suspicious deaths of young Black people.

On 1 October, students in the AUC held a march in solidarity with Wells and his family. Thousands of students participated.

Barhn Gadson, president of Clark Atlanta’s chapter of the NAACP, said: “We’ve seen time and time again the mistreatment of cases involving young Black Americans. There’s not so much of an attention towards it until we do things like having to march and having to riot. We’ve gotten to a point where we are tired of having to fight for young Black males or young Black females or any Black individual for our lives to mean something.” Gadson added: “To us, it’s we either speak out or we just shut up. Just because we may not be in the same city or the same state doesn’t mean that we can’t speak out on it. And just because there is a one ruling here doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to protest, doesn’t mean that we are not going to advocate for our community. I mean, we are the NAACP. This is what we’ve been doing for years.”

A’Nija Hughley, president of Spelman’s NAACP chapter, said HBCU students were “in a unique position where we are allowed to learn how to be critically conscious, and we learn how structures are built to work against us.” She added: “As students who are legacies of those who started the civil rights movement and the Atlanta student movement, it’s kind of our job to speak up and then also show our support for [Wells’] family.” Hughley said the idea for the solidarity march came from a student in her Spelman NAACP chapter who wanted to know what they could do for Wells, and that she wanted to keep the march AUC-wide rather than march to the state capitol or otherwise engage the larger community. “We cannot sit and look at injustice and not say anything about it,” she said. “It honestly could have been any one of us. This one hits close because he’s around our age. He looks like us.”

Jakari Holland, an organizer of the JSU rally and the founder of the Mississippi Access Project, said JSU’s location in central Mississippi made it particularly important for students to speak out. “Multiple people have passed away inside Mississippi under suspicious circumstances,” he said. “Jackson State University, being a public institution and bringing in public funding, but also at the centerpiece inside the capital in Mississippi, we have to take a stance. We have to bring awareness and transparency in light of what’s happening. This could be any one of us. We’re young people inside Mississippi, and we’re seeing what’s going on in the backyard of our home.”

Holland invoked the history of HBCU activism, naming “the Greensboro Four, when they were at North Carolina A&T and sat down in Woolworth’s lunch counter,” the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, “the students at South Carolina State that were shot” and “the people that our Gibson-Green plaza is named for.” He said: “It’s crazy to see that people love talking about and celebrating Black history, but when you’re living through it, that’s when the issue comes about because you don’t like people that challenge the societal norms.”

Wells’ similarities to the JSU students in age and appearance were noted by the marchers, who continued across campus chanting: “Our lives matter. That could’ve been me. They look like me. Say their names!”