Across Mecklenburg County, hundreds march in 9th day of George Floyd protests

A ninth day of protests in the Charlotte area, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, drew hundreds of demonstrators Saturday to multiple events throughout the day. All the gatherings were peaceful.

Demonstrations were organized across Mecklenburg County, from the Dilworth and Myers Park neighborhoods in Charlotte to the UNC Charlotte campus, as well as the town of Davidson.

Charlotte, like much of the country, is entering its second week of protests over the death of Floyd, a black man who was killed while a Minnesota police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while restraining him. The demonstrations in Charlotte have been largely peaceful, though they have been marked by scattered property damage and sharply criticized police tactics, including the use of chemical agents.

Scores of protesters marched through the Cherry neighborhood Saturday evening before returning to the edge of Uptown. A handful of officers followed the protesters but largely left the crowd to march peacefully through the night.

At the intersection of Kings Drive and 4th Street, demonstrators called for the resignation of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Kerr Putney and City Council member Tariq Bokhari, who has staunchly defended the police department despite mounting criticism.

CMPD has faced criticism from elected officials as well as the public over the use of chemical agents during Tuesday night’s protests. A video recorded by Queen City Nerve, an alternative newspaper, appears to show a mass of demonstrators walking near 4th and College streets in uptown when police released chemical agents on the crowd. Protesters turned to go in the other direction, but officers on that side blocked their path, also using chemical agents.

City Council members wanted to discipline the police commander who authorized the move, but Putney refused to tell them the person’s name. In a livestream, Bokhari used a whiteboard diagram to make the case that the police did not actually box in protesters during the Tuesday incident.

“Tariq gotta go,” protesters chanted Saturday night. “Tariq gotta go.”

Demonstrators marched through and around Uptown after sundown, pausing in front of an aid station set up in front of the jail to grab water and snacks. Some protesters used their bikes to to help direct traffic for the march as it started and stopped through the streets.

At one stop, Wilfred Nagbe told the crowd not just to vote, but to deeply research who they were voting for, the candidates’ records and what those candidates had done for their communities.

“Take the first step toward change in your communities,” he said. “Because if you want to see change, you have to become that change.”

Kearria McVay said she joined the protest because she felt obligated to use her voice to advocate for people who could not. She said she hoped the activism would lead to concrete policy and culture changes within police departments across the country.

Stephen Smith said that while protests against police brutality were not new in Charlotte, what changed this time was the fact that a number of white protesters had joined the demonstrations.

“If you look at that front line, that’s a story,” he said. “It didn’t look like that for Keith Lamont Scott. That’s how this is different.”

Earlier, on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, as temperatures reached up to 90 degrees, upwards of 500 people marched through the UNC Charlotte campus as attendees handed out water and snacks. Organizers said the turnout far exceeded their expectations.

Sitting in the bed of a pickup truck, megaphone in hand, organizer Joshua Mason said today’s protests are rooted in the country’s history of enslaving African Americans.

“This is no new issue,” Mason said. “If you want me to be honest, this has been going on for 400 years since African Americans were brought over here on slave ships. … That’s trickled down all the way to where we are today.”

Chanting “Black lives matter,” and “No justice, no peace,” demonstrators marched roughly three miles through the UNC Charlotte campus, joined by the university’s Chief of Police Jeff Baker.

Baker said he asked the roughly 20 police officers stationed at the protest to wear street clothes, as he did himself, which was a request from the organizers of the march.

Marchers took a knee at the intersection of North Tryon and Mallard Creek Church Road and read the names of black people killed by police in the United States.

In Freedom Park, a separate demonstration began shortly before 5 p.m. Two Myers Park High School alumni, Kaden Knight and Cameron Parker, organized the event and said that they wanted to create an opportunity for individuals of all backgrounds to gather in solidarity to address racial injustice.

“Social media has been the great equalizer to get people out here,” Parker said.

Knight said they wanted to bring protests to white neighborhoods in Charlotte. The week of protests against police brutality have been concentrated in Uptown, but in recent days have spread to more affluent parts of Mecklenburg County.

“We should be protesting in places that are more white, and we knew what Myers Park looks like,” Knight said.

Hollis Collman, a rising senior at Myers Park High School, said that she could not have imagined a Black Lives Matter protest coming through the neighborhood, which she noted has historically been more conservative. She said that she felt obligated to take action as the protests and demonstrations were being organized.

“As a white woman with privilege, it’s my job to use that privilege to make sure black voices are heard,” she said.

The march that started at Freedom Park moved through the streets to Park Road Shopping Center, where the marchers were met by a separate demonstration that had entered the plaza. As the march moved through the neighborhood, the size of the crowd grew as bystanders joined in the demonstration.

This story was originally published June 6, 2020 at 6:02 PM.