Who are some of the Memphis activists behind the George Floyd marches?

One was moved to activism in 2006, when Louisiana prosecutors tried to make six black teenage boys face 100 years in prison for what amounted to a school fight. Another has been a fixture in Memphis' fight to remove Confederate monuments from its parks, while another is worried about the mental and emotional health of black people who continue to see police kill other black people.

Those are the varied reasons behind why these people decided to pool their outrage and worries into daily processions on Memphis' streets.

Hence, a look at some of the activists who are ensuring that what happened to George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man who died on May 25 when Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes, isn't soon forgotten.

Theryn C. Bond

Bond, 34, who’s been bringing her bullhorn and her passion to Memphis’ protests over George Floyd’s slaying by a Minneapolis police officer, said her political activism began in 2006, when six black teenagers in Jena, Louisiana, were charged with attempted murder for beating up a white classmate.

That excessive charge, one in which the teenagers, who became known as the Jena 6, could have faced 100 years in prison, and one which came in the wake of racially-charged incidents at Jena High School, opened Bond’s eyes to inequalities in the criminal justice system.

Theryn Bond speaks to a Memphis police officer during protests on Union Avenue Wednesday night, May 27, 2020, in Midtown Memphis.

“That’s the time it became very, very real to me,” said Bond, who took a bus to cover the Jena 6 protests as a student majoring in radio and television production at Tennessee State University.

“Going through school we read history books. We have Black History Month and it’s the shortest month in all the year. But that was the time that I, as a fresh adult, learned that there were big things wrong in America.

Theryn Bond leads protesters in Memphis, Tenn., for the fifth straight day on Sunday, May 31, 2020, in reaction to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after being pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day.

“People marched in the 1960s … the Jena 6 marches were my version of the lunch counter sit-ins and the marches during the 1960s," she said. 

Bond hasn’t stopped marching. She was arrested while protesting the shooting of Martavious Banks in 2018. She’s battled cancer and she unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Memphis City Council.

Theryn Bond confronts Memphis police officers during protests on Union Avenue Wednesday night, May 27, 2020, in Midtown Memphis

And Floyd’s slaying brought her back out into the streets.

“I know the importance of protesting in the streets, and I also know the importance of engaging voters and getting them to go to the polls,” Bond said.

“From protest to the polls, we’ve got to make stuff happen.”

Amber Sherman

Sherman, who can be seen helping with the marshaling in Memphis’ protests over the slaying of George Floyd, also participated in the 2016 Black Lives Matter shutdown of the Hernando de Soto Bridge.

She's also a political science graduate of the University of Tennessee who's now working on a master’s degree in legal studies online from Hodges University.

That’s fitting since her activism and her desire for people to be treated fairly goes back to her college years.  

Amber Sherman chants through a megaphone as she leads a group down Adams Avenue during the Women's March downtown Memphis on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019.

“I was at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and we were having an issue with privatization,” said Sherman, who was working with a group to prevent the campus jobs from being privatized.

“It was a small campus, and if (the state) would have privatized those jobs, everyone would have lost their jobs.”

Now Sherman, 25, is marching for Floyd.

“I jumped into it because of the severity of it,” she said. “You had Ahmaud Arbery who was killed in February, you had Breonna Taylor who was killed in March, and now you have George Floyd,” she said. “And those are just the names of the people we know. 

“Black people shouldn’t be put through that kind of trauma over and over again. Black people have already been put through the trauma of 400 years of slavery, of social and economic inequality, and not we have to watch them be killed on the Internet.”

Keedran Franklin

Franklin, 34, one of the main organizers with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, has been a key organizer for many civil disobedience actions in Memphis.

He helped elevate public pressure as part of a year-long civic-led campaign in 2017 that called for the removal of the equestrian statue of slave trader and Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

Keedran Franklin, a member of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens and an organizer for the Fight for $15 Union Rights Campaign, was on the Hernando de Soto Bridge during a Black Lives Matter protest on July 10, 2016. Franklin is also helping to lead the protests over the death of George Floyd in Memphis.

But Franklin's activism did not start with, nor end with the removal of the Forrest monument from Health Sciences Park.

Instead, Franklin, in his leadership role with the coalition, has orchestrated acts of protest that touch on issues that disproportionately impact black citizens in Memphis and beyond, with special emphasis on low-wage jobs that help bolster Memphis' staggering poverty rate. 

In 2016, police and city officials included Franklin on a list of 81 citizens that required police escort for entry into City Hall. The Memphis police said activists like Franklin were placed on the list in error.

The city hall "blacklist" became central to an ongoing lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the City of Memphis. The lawsuit alleges officials have violated a consent decree that forbids police surveillance of private citizens for their political affiliations.

Al Lewis

Lewis is a second-generation activist from Memphis. His mother, Sara Lewis, was a long-standing board member of Memphis City Schools and an education equity advocate.

Lewis, 66, is a primary organizer with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, bringing decades of activism experience to the coalition and working alongside the next generation of organizers in Memphis. 

Aug. 12, 2016 - Al Lewis speaks with reporters outside City Hall about plans to protest at Graceland. His wife Catherine Lewis  is at center and Theryn C. Bond, another member of the protest group, is at right. (photo by Daniel Connolly)

The first protest Lewis recalls participating occurred in the 1968 Sanitation Workers' Strike, when Martin Luther King Jr. first visited the striking workers. Lewis was 14. 

Since then, Lewis has participated in numerous actions of civil disobedience, with the aim of elevating collective consciousness in Memphis around issues that disproportionately impact black Memphians — low wages, health disparities, police brutality and transit access, to name a few.

Among the more immediate demands Lewis has for the City of Memphis and MPD are increased de-escalation training for law enforcement, and heightened mental health resources for both the police and the communities they are entrusted with protecting.

More:Activists ask Memphis police for more de-escalation training, better mental health resources for officers

Mark Ravi 

Ravi, 39, has been organizing with various groups in Memphis in earnest since 2016, when help was needed for civic actions for protests at Graceland and the Valero refinery in South Memphis.

He has lived in Memphis since he was three years old. He said his role in civil disobedience actions has evolved over the years from his initial starting point as a legal observer. He is an organizer with the Coalition of Concerned Citizens and president of Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, among other community-focused organizations.

The past year of Ravi's life was quiet, he said, until the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the vigilante slaying of Ahmaud Arbery sparked protests across the nation. 

With a fresh wave of first-timers taking to Memphis streets to protest violence against black bodies, Ravi, like others, has felt compelled to keep watch over protests, providing guidance and a watchful eye.

He said he's encouraged by how many have taken up the cause, but doesn't want citizens to be overwhelmed by protests, which are sometimes marked with tension between citizens and law enforcement.

"A lot of people can be scared of actions, but we don't want that," Ravi said, "We want everyone to feel they have a place in this movement."

DeVante Hill

Hill, a senior pastor at One Church Memphis, has been leading Black Lives Matter marches in Memphis every evening since May 28. The marches, which usually feature Hill leading chants in front of hundreds of protesters winding through Downtown streets, have stopped at nearly every historic marker of the Civil Rights Era in the Downtown area. 

Devante Hill leads a demonstration on a march from FedExForum to the National Civil Rights Museum in reaction to the recent death of George Floyd on Friday, May 29, 2020. This is the third night of protests in Memphis, Tenn.

For more than a week, protests led by Hill, 27, have been guarded by law enforcement, with intersections blocked off for marchers and police largely hanging back from the crowds. He has emphasized the protests as examples of peaceful demonstrations for the rest of the nation to learn from. 

Prior to the recent uptick in Black Lives Matter protests, Hill was last seen in the media as a key person in one of Memphis' largest demonstrations to date — the protest that shut down the Hernando de Soto bridge for hours during one hot summer night in July 2016. Then, as it is now, a spate of police killings of unarmed black men drove, by some estimates, thousands to the bridge. 

Devante Hill speaks to demonstrators at the National Civil Rights Museum as they march in reaction to the recent death of George Floyd on Friday, May 29, 2020. This is the third night of protests in Memphis, Tenn.

In a photo that ricocheted off of news sites around the world, Hill was seen ending the hours-long 2016 demonstration after walking off the bridge arm-in-arm with then-interim MPD Director Mike Rallings.

Frank Gottie

Gottie, 37, is a community activist that has also been a nightly fixture during the Black Lives Matter protests as of late. Over the years, the 37-year-old activist has cut his own path as the founder of the organization "Put Dem Guns Down and Fight Like a Man," an anti-gun violence campaign. He's been known to appear in the aftermath of a Memphis homicide, bullhorn in hand, pleading for an end to violence within the community.

Organizer Frank Gottie addresses protesters in Memphis, Tenn., during the seventh straight day of protests on Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in reaction to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after being pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day.

Like other organizers in today's protests, Gottie was present for the Black Lives Matter protest that shut down that Hernando de Soto bridge for hours in July 2016. Since that protest, he has kept a dual focus on police brutality and advocacy for anti-gun violence. 

In the nightly protests as of late, Gottie, whose birth name is Frank Gibson, can often be seen within the crowds of hundreds, seemingly keeping watch over events as they unfold. 

Tucker Dunaway

Tucker Dunaway remembers the specific instance from his childhood that later prompted him to become interested in activism.

He was about 14 years old, playing with a black BB gun in his backyard when he accidentally set off the house’s alarm system and the police arrived.

He turned around, with what looked like a real gun pointed at the police.

“They said, ‘Hey kid, how are you?’” Dunaway remembers.

Protester Tucker Dunaway stands with his arms in the air while in Memphis, Tenn., during the fifth straight day on Sunday, May 31, 2020, in reaction to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after being pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day.

Also six years ago, another little boy was playing with a replica toy gun in Cleveland, Ohio: Tamir Rice. When an officer arrived, Rice was killed within seconds.

“They didn’t greet him with the same smile,” Dunaway said. “They greeted him with a bullet and now he’s dead and I’m not. In my heart, I know the only thing I did different from him that day was be white. That’s why I’m here.”

Dunaway has participated in most of the marches protesting the death of George Floyd since they began in Memphis. He’s not interested in holding the megaphone, he said, but when moments become tense, he often moves to where the conflict is thickest.

There’s an image circulating on Twitter that shows him wrapping his arms around a black protester as the two of them are trapped against a police car and surrounded by mounted police. The other protester was pinned between the horses and the car while being told to move out of the way, Dunaway said.

“They didn’t treat me like that, so I went up there and hugged him, and I was going to be there right with him no matter what happened,” Dunaway said.

A 20-year-old college student from Memphis, Dunaway said he would be doing his city a disservice not to join the protesters.

“If I can take some pepper spray or a baton or a riot shield before one of my black brothers and sisters out here, I’ll do that in a heartbeat,” Dunaway said. “They’ve been facing oppression at the hands of the country that they built.”

Darin Abston Jr.

If someone is standing at parade rest shouting in a police officer’s face, it’s probably Darin Abston Jr.

Darin Abston yells at police holding shields in Memphis, Tenn., during the eighth straight day of protests on Wednesday, June 3, 2020, in reaction to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after being pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day.

“They need to see righteous anger,” Abston said. “I am not kneeling anymore.”

The head of the Memphis People Coalition and a member of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Memphis, Abston, 28, is a former member of the U.S. Air Force.

Since protests broke out in Memphis over police brutality and the death of George Floyd, Abston has marched, participated in a rolling bridge blockade and led a shutdown of Germantown Parkway near the Agricenter.

On the night of May 30, after a protest ended, Abston saw a group of young black men being bothered by a police officer on Beale Street, he said. When he interrupted, the officer called for backup — and said that “white life matters more than a black life,” Abston said.

Darin Abston speaks to protesters at a rally at the National Civil Rights Museum around 10 p.m. in Memphis, Tenn., during a fifth straight day of protests on Sunday, May 31, 2020, in reaction to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after being pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day.

Abston said that interaction is what resulted in a second protest breaking out that night, one that resulted in his arrest and the arrest of several others.

Abston was arrested after hopping over a police barrier, then walking back and forth between police and the barrier. He was charged with disorderly conduct, obstruction of a highway or passageway and resisting official detention.

Another evening, Abston confronted officers at 201 Poplar, his face inches away from theirs.

And on Wednesday, he demanded that an officer give him an apology for having previously “tried to kill” him.

When Abston does that — puts his face inches away from the officer’s and starts to shout — he’s usually fired up by something, he said. It’s also a strategy.

“I know for a fact I have a right to protest. I can yell all night long. You can yell to the top of your lungs. They literally break and cannot hold their composure. They break and get physical, and that proves it right there,” he said. “I’m a man of the military. I’ve had guns in my face and I can hold my composure. That’s exactly what our uniforms need to have.”

There are other moments during the protests when Abston focuses on protecting others: Helping a teargassed woman to safety, putting himself between protesters and police after damage was caused to a convenience store.

That’s particularly important to him, he said.

“I literally fought for this country,” Abston said. “I know as a fact that as an activist that is what I want to do. I want to protect all. If you are an American, I love you. I don’t care what you have done before. I am not a judge, you are an American. I love you.”