‘What can I do to use my platform?’ Duke‘s Wendell Moore finds answers in protest
Duke basketball player Wendell Moore Jr. said he had one primary goal regarding the protest against systemic racism he organized and led Saturday afternoon — to “bring the noise.”
Moore, 18, is well-known in the Concord area for leading Cox Mill to two North Carolina state basketball championships in high school. Inspired by the “Black Lives Matter” movement, Moore attended two protests in the Charlotte area over the past two weeks.
Afterward, he wondered aloud to his girlfriend, 19-year-old UNC Charlotte student Marissa Moyer, why similar events in Concord were rare.
“Why don’t you and I just organize one ourselves?” Moyer asked.
And so the two teenagers did just that, working feverishly together for five days in preparation for the 90-minute peaceful protest they led Saturday at Concord’s Dorton Park.
Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyewski called Moore a few hours before the event began.
“He’s very supportive of what I was doing here,” Moore said of that conversation with Coach K. “He said he was very proud of me, that it takes courage to come out and do this.”
‘This really matters a lot’
Moore and Moyer advertised their protest on social media. About 100 people showed up to listen to speeches and to participate in both a march through a nearby neighborhood and a “die-in” under a park awning for eight minutes and 46 seconds. That was the amount of time that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was videotaped pressing his knee to the neck of George Floyd, a Black man whose death while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25 has prompted more than two weeks of nationwide protests.
“This is not a big (protest) like the ones you may see on social media,” Moore said of the Concord march. “But to me, this really matters a lot. This is where I’m from; where all my friends live. We just want to bring the same awareness that is seen everywhere into our area.”
Moyer attended protests in Charlotte alongside Moore recently and said they also made her want to do something in their shared hometown of Concord, a city of approximately 100,000 people that is perhaps best known for being the home of Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“You saw the hurt and the pain in Charlotte,” Moyer said. “But then you come over here and you don’t hear or see as much. I don’t like that. Because there are people here that are hurting, too.”
A march toward justice
A 6-foot-6 forward, Moore won back-to-back Charlotte Observer Player of the Year awards while at Cox Mill in 2018 and 2019.
As a freshman at Duke, Moore said his most memorable moment was scoring the winning basket on a putback layup in the final moment of overtime in a classic UNC-Duke game at Chapel Hill in February. He also had some “dull” moments as a freshman, he said, before his first college basketball season abruptly ended at the ACC tournament due to COVID-19.
Moore went home to Concord after that and has since decided to return to Duke for at least his sophomore year to improve his game. He said the 2020-21 Duke basketball team, bolstered by another talented group of freshmen, would “do something special.”
Shepherded by about 10 policemen and policewomen in cars and on bicycles, Moore and Moyer led the protesters’ 45-minute walk Saturday.
There was one brief moment of conflict during the walk through a nearby neighborhood. A white woman who was walking her dog in the neighborhood started to yell “All Lives Matter” each time the protesters yelled “Black Lives Matter.” One protester stopped to talk with her, the rest of the march moved on and the mild confrontation quickly ended.
Moore said he had been lifting weights in his small home gym and had been trying to shoot in basketball gyms “whenever I can get in one.” He said Floyd’s death had made him stop thinking as much about basketball, however, and start thinking more about life.
“I’ve been working out a lot,” Moore said. “But once all (the protests) started, I kind of shifted my focus to try to help my community. What can I do to use my platform? Not only to (promote) awareness in the world, but also just right here in my own community… I thought today was great… I heard cars honking their horns, people joining us from their balconies. To me, that’s all that matters, that we were able to spread our word and reach other people.”
