What has motivated residents of small-town Pennsylvania to join in the movement for racial equality?

by Mark Kramer

Beverly Perkins stands among a couple hundred demonstrators in the middle of East Pike Street in the heart of downtown Canonsburg —population 8,760 and 87% white. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in June.

Perkins, who is Black, says Canonsburg “still has a lot of small town ideology,” and that her teenage son and nephew, who stand alongside her today, have been called racial slurs and “told to go pick cotton.”

At the center of the throng, about a dozen organizers in their early 20s take turns speaking into an amplified mic and megaphone. They talk about George Floyd, voting, gender, microaggressions and, among other things, instructions on how the crowd will soon march several blocks to the Canon-McMillan School District offices. One young woman sings the Black National Anthem.

Police officers have cordoned off two blocks of Pike Street with plastic jersey barriers. The officers stand in pairs around the perimeter.

Perkins knows many of these officers by name, and they know her children’s names. She says the officers wave when she walks by them.

“I would never step outside my home and be terrified that any one of these men would do anything [negative],” she says. Perkins says she feels “lucky, and proud of our police officers.”

Perkins and others crowding East Pike Street are among the many residents of southwestern Pennsylvania participating in what has become the largest protest movement in U.S. history and a global demonstration for police reform.  In the weeks following May 26, when then-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, demonstrations in many cities, including Pittsburgh, led to confrontations  between police and community members. Demands to defund police departments have gained momentum, as municipalities have enacted changes to policing policies, practices and budgets.

Why have people living in small and mid-sized municipalities throughout southwestern Pennsylvania turned out by the hundreds to denounce police brutality and confront racism? And in towns that are up to 95% white, what is motivating residents to march down the street yelling “Black Lives Matter”?

Marchers in Canonsburg head up North Central Avenue toward’s the borough building during a June 20, 2020 march against racism and police brutality. (Photo by Heather Mull/PublicSource)

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT:

What has motivated residents of small-town Pennsylvania to join in the movement for racial equality?

About Post Author

Comments

From the Web

Skip to content