Black fathers impart messages to their kids at Belleville’s Black Lives Matter rally
Ruben Howell spent his lunch break on Wednesday at the Black Lives Matters protest in downtown Belleville and found a moment to show his daughter how to act in the face of adversity.
Many motorists at the Public Square honked their horns in support of the rally sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. But at least one white motorist yelled a racial slur as he waved his middle finger toward the crowd.
In response to the obscene gesture, Howell, who is black, had this message for his daughter, Claire Howell, a rising junior at Belleville West High School: “There are people in the world that don’t have the same values as you and we have to understand that and we have to navigate these, especially black people,” he told her.
“A conversation is a two-way street and you can’t out yell someone,” said Howell, who is a brand manager for a chemical company. “So the idea is if you call me a very bad name and I call you one, then where to we go from there? It only escalates. I try to defuse it the best I can.
“I’m not excusing anybody’s behavior but I have a daughter to protect. I want her to be able to have enough social skills to handle any situation.”
One of the organizers of the rally, Cooper Jackson, 21, of Swansea was incensed by the motorist and took off running after him. Another protest organizer, McKenzie “Mack” Slack, said Jackson stopped running and took a break from the rally to cool down.
This was the fifth Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Belleville since May 30 and Floyd’s Memorial Day death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.
Other protests in the metro-east have been in Freeburg, O’Fallon, Granite City, Highland, Fairview Heights and Edwardsville.
The Belleville rally drew a diverse crowd of about 100 black and white protesters.
Skylar Ross, 19, and Mila Long, 18, both of Freeburg, were the first two to arrive at the rally Wednesday. The Southwestern Illinois College students, who are white, wanted to show their support to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Long said she is seeing injustices happening and “I feel like we need to make a statement for it to stop.”
Demario Bell of East St. Louis attended the rally with his son, Collin, 15, and his daughter, Sydney, 18.
Bell went to the rally to support his children “who wanted to be part of this for justice.”
“And me being an Afro-American father of two, especially a young man, I wanted to make sure that I show him the way to being a young black man in America today,” Bell said. “Making sure everybody, especially Afro Americans are treated equally, making sure that all races are treated equally.”
Floyd, a black man, died after a white police officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck during an arrest. A video recorded Floyd saying “I can’t breathe” while he was handcuffed and face down. The officer, Derek Chauvin, has since been fired and charged with second-degree murder.
Protests have been ongoing across the country in the wake of Floyd’s death and others remembered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of the protests have given way to rioting, including the shooting death of retired police captain in St. Louis while other protests, police officers have been accused of using too much force on protesters.
Many of the protesters in Belleville on Wednesday carried signs and shouted out “No justice, no peace.”
Rally organizer reflects
For Jackson, before the motorist disrupted the rally, it was a time of reflection. His voice was weakened from leading so many cheers during a rally on the courthouse plaza last week.
In an interview before the rally, Jackson said he wants to keep the spotlight on the deaths of unarmed black civilians who have died in police encounters nationwide in recent years.
“With that in mind, I am a black civilian,” Jackson said. “That could very well have been me. That could have been my mother, that could have been my brother. This means a lot to me and I don’t want to raise my kids and teach them that the peacekeepers aren’t people they can trust.”
As far as policy reforms, Jackson said he would like officials to “demilitarize” police departments but he acknowledges that would be difficult because of the access to weapons Americans have.
“But what I would say is that these problems that result in the stereotypes that are used for the justification used in the killings, they start at the base level in the schools.”
Students in black communities should have access to the same resources as students in predominantly white communities, Jackson said.
“A lot of those kids grow up without that, a lot of those kids drop out of school, a lot of those kids turn to crime because there is nothing else they can do and then that breeds those stereotypes,” Jackson said. “Those stereotypes get used for murders. If you can stop it there, hopefully you can stop the murders.”
Vincent Norris, a 20-year-old white man from Belleville, listened to Jackson’s comments and suggested that a community with strong families and not the government will provide solutions. Jackson agreed, saying, “It’s a grassroots thing.”
Jackson said he helped organize the rallies in Belleville because he wants what’s recited in the Pledge of Allegiance: “liberty and justice for all.”
“I really hope that the people who need to see this need to understand that there’s a problem, see it and acknowledge that help work to eradicate the problems,” he said.
Jackson said he has experienced racial profiling. One time occurred when he was riding a bike shortly after Philandro Castile, a black man, was killed in Minnesota by a Hispanic-American police officer during a traffic stop in 2016. Jackson said the officer made him get off his bike and raise his hands. After patting down Jackson, the officer left without a word.
In another example, he said he was cleaning the windows of his home in Swansea when someone called the police because they thought he was breaking into his own home.
“All I was doing was cleaning my windows,” he said.
Jackson spent much of Wednesday’s rally with his head bowed down.
During a quiet pause of 8 minutes and 46 seconds in memory of the time Floyd was pinned to the ground, Jackson knelt on the curb as cars sped past on Illinois Street.
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 3:30 PM.
