The 2020 March on Washington introduces young students to a new civil rights movement
This story was published in partnership with The 19th, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Rev. Al Sharpton’s words rode the heat waves over Washington, D.C., hitting Brigette Brantley with the force of six months of pain, a lifetime of inequality.
Sharpton addressed tens of thousands of protesters on Friday from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the same spot where, 57 years earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. had delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. But his words were meant for all Americans.
“We need to have a conversation about your racism, about your bigotry, about your hate, about how you would put your knee on our neck while we cried for our lives.”
In the audience, tears spilled from Brantley’s eyes.
The social studies teacher from the Bronx organized two buses to travel from her neighborhood with 38 students and parents four hours to D.C. to stand here, shoulder to shoulder with them, and watch history unfold.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she listened.
Ever since a video of Brantley speaking to a local reporter during a Black Lives Matter protest in June went viral, she has collected more than $55,000 in donations to travel across the country to witness the protests herself. But coronavirus got in the way of those plans, so Brantley put her energy into planning this trip to D.C., the first time many of the children would be visiting the capital.
Before they arrived home, the group stopped at a rest stop on Interstate 95 named for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — the Biden Welcome Center, near Newark in Delaware. In line for Popeyes, Brantley spotted a face she had only ever seen before on TV: Korey Wise, one of the exonerated Central Park Five.
Wise, who spent 14 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, is now a civil rights activist. He had been at the march earlier that day.
“Mr. Korey Wise,” Brantley said, approaching him.
“I know you’ve been asked to take a lot of pictures,” she said, “you and I know how us New Yorkers are, once we get our cameras out, we ready to go.”
He smiled at her from under a black New York Yankees cap. “Where are you from?”
The Bronx, she told him.
“I could tell,” he said, agreeing to the photo.
Brantley then told him how her father and uncles had watched his case unfold. She told him she was a social studies teacher — “the real social studies, where I’m telling it from our perspective, our history.” And she introduced him to her activism work, to the group whose name she had printed on her shirt.
They were still “babies in the social activism world,” she said, but he seemed pleased.
Then her nephew Jarrid walked up.
“Are you Korey Wise?” the 13-year-old asked.
Wise and Brantley exchanged a look.
“Are you Korey Wise?” Wise responded.
“No,” Jarrid said, “but I could have been a Korey Wise.”