People

7 voices: How the Scott shooting changed Charlotte, and the work left to do

By CharlotteFive Staff

Updated October 13, 2019 4:31 PM

The 2016 shooting of Keith Lamont Scott and the protests and violence that followed rocked Charlotte. Some people found a new calling in the wave of grief and unrest. Others saw work they were already doing — in activism, in raising awareness — take on new urgency.

We asked seven people to talk about what’s changed for them in their work, in their sense of mission and in their lives, and in the life of Charlotte. These are their words, with some editing for brevity and clarity.

(1) Ash Williams

Ash Williams, a North Carolina native, leads activists in Charlotte who assemble around a range of issues including LGBTQ equality, police shootings, treatment of immigrants in the United States and workers’ rights.

Williams helps lead Charlotte Uprising, a coalition formed after the Scott shooting. Now, Williams talks about “uprising” both as an organization and an idea, as well as the emergence of “cross-movement” activism in Charlotte since then.

“One of the things that Charlotte Uprising has tried to do is to go beyond and to go further out than the officer-involved shootings that just deal with black people. For example, Josue Javier Diaz was a person killed by CMPD last year and we did what we always do: We went to the site, we started recording, we started getting folks’ narratives who were on the ground and we were resisting police at that point.

“What we try to do is to just lift up the voices and the narratives and try to disrupt the dominant narratives. Or, maybe provide another perspective that folks wouldn’t see on the news.”

Read more from Williams here.

(2) The Rev. Amantha Barbee

The Rev. Amantha Barbee, pastor of Statesville Avenue Presbyterian Church, became chair of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice shortly after the city erupted in the wake of the shooting. Barbee and other coalition members were literally on the front lines during the protests of September 2016, putting themselves between demonstrators and police.

On Sept. 20, the coalition will lead an “accountability march” around uptown Charlotte, marking important sites from the protests a year ago and demanding to know what city leaders have done to respond.

“We wanted to be a voice of reason in a peaceful protest. The protest was against hatred, was against systemic racism, and the inequities not just in our country but in our city.

“We keep hearing, ‘This isn’t Charlotte.’ Yes it is. I’ve been in Charlotte since I came out of the womb. This is Charlotte. When you silence something so long, you keep the top on the bottle so long and you keep shaking it, it’s bound to explode. I think that’s what we saw.”

(3) Tina Marshall

Tina Marshall was a moderately politically active retiree – attending a meeting here, a forum there – when she answered an urgent Facebook request for help from Charlotte Uprising organizer Ash Williams the day after the Scott shooting. Now, 62-year-old Marshall is a constant presence at community events, forums and meetings and is a volunteer for the Exodus Foundation, which aims to stop the flow of African-Americans to prison and support those who have been released.

“I went to meet (Ash Williams) at a coffee shop the day after the shooting and from there on it went 10,000 miles an hour. The next thing I knew, I was coordinating all the supplies that were coming into Charlotte from Uprising. I met people from all over the country that were true freedom fighters. They were activists. I was really kind of in awe and shocked, all these young people in their 20s. I was the most senior person there. Everybody was pretty nice, but I felt like I had nothing really to offer because I had not been to anything. I had read about it, and said, ‘I’m going to go,’ but I never did.

“Because of Ash, I was in this world that I had no idea even existed, not as I knew it. Back in the 1970s I had marched against the Vietnam War and I had marched against this and that. But this organization was nothing like I had seen back in the ’70s. This was far more organized. Back in the day people would organize and would be passing out fliers and it would take weeks or months to put something together because we didn’t have the technology like we have now. Now, it’s a Facebook page.”

(4) Alvin C. Jacobs Jr.

Charlotte professional photographer Alvin C. Jacobs Jr. was at a Washington, D.C., protest when he got a call last Sept. 22 that Scott had been shot. He came straight to Charlotte and immediately started making images, and continued through the unrest. He has traveled to document protests in cities including Ferguson, Baltimore and, most recently, Charlottesville, and defines himself as an “image activist.”

Jacobs’ work is on display at the Levine Museum of the New South’s “K(NO)W Justice K(NO)W Peace” exhibition. The night he drove back into Charlotte last September, he caught his first glimpse of the protest from a highway bridge.

“ ‘This reminds me of Ferguson. This reminds me of Baltimore. This reminds me of Chicago’ (he recalls thinking). But it’s different because this is home. I’m seeing familiar faces. I know these people that are down here.

“My mannerisms allow law enforcement to see me differently. I wasn’t asked to leave or anything. I was able to navigate differently. I call it situational awareness. I’ve used it in various theaters. I call them theaters now. It kind of gives me a distance both mentally and physically.”

(5) Greg Jackson

Greg Jackson was a rapper and a sous chef when the September protests began. He showed up with others to protest the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department at its headquarters the day after the shooting. But a crucial conversation that day changed his trajectory – eventually, he helped train officers how to communicate with the community in volatile situations, and has created an after-school camp for at-risk youth in his northeast Charlotte neighborhood.

“I was leading people to the (police) headquarters (Sept. 21), just saying what we had problems with, voicing our opinions, yelling as much as we can.

“Garry McFadden (longtime CMPD detective who now works part-time) walked out of the headquarters, with some swag and dapper … So I approached him. I’m like, ‘Who do you think you are? You just come out of the headquarters, mister black man, in a suit. Are you crazy? We’re serious.’”

(6) Patrice Funderburg

Seeing video of Philando Castile bleeding out from a Minnesota police officer’s gunshot set Patrice Funderburg on a new life path in July 2016. Two months later, Scott’s death accelerated her change.

Funderburg, who had built a career in corporate HR and organizational development, launched a six-week discussion series based on Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Just over 100 people turned out to explore racism in the criminal justice system, including police shootings of black people. Scott’s death came two days before the group’s final session.

In January Funderburg launched a new career running Educate to Engage, which does antiracism consulting and continues to host free discussion groups. Her sixth round of New Jim Crow discussions started Sept. 7. In the past year, Funderburg has started volunteering with Changed Choices and the Center for Community Transitions; both support people who are or have been incarcerated. She has also built new coalitions with longtime and emerging activists.

“I literally had an anxiety attack last July after watching Philando Castille being murdered on Facebook Live. It propelled me to do something different than just be aware of what’s happening in the country.

“(For the first discussion series) myself, my husband, my daughter and maybe two other people were the only brown faces in the room and I did not know what to do with that. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting a room full of white people. But the same voice that came to me when I had that anxiety attack on the greenway said to me, ‘You don’t get to choose who you serve.’ I had my little scripting notes and I just went with it.”

(7) Jesse Cureton

Jesse Cureton, a Charlotte native and executive vice president with Novant Health, spent the day before Keith Scott was shot in a Dismantling Racism workshop with other community leaders. When turmoil broke out in the streets, he texted two other African American executives, Gene Woods of Carolinas Healthcare and Brett Carter of Bank of America. They swapped ideas about how to respond.

In early November the trio rolled out One Charlotte, designed to bring corporate leaders and clergy into the conversation about how to invest in change. The effort debuted with a march that drew hundreds to uptown Charlotte. Since that march, there’s been little visible action from One Charlotte. Cureton says the group is working with the Opportunity Task Force to address long-range solutions to injustice and lack of opportunity.

“I grew up in this community. I had the privilege of working for a bank and now a health care system, and am at a point in my career where I can’t allow this to happen without doing something.

“(The One Charlotte march) would be the launch of a different narrative around how we would begin to look at our communities. Having clergy as part of this movement is very important, because in addition to the tactical things that need to take place, we have to begin to cause people to pivot.”