 My name is Connor Goodwin and I'm ProPublica's Interim Director of Communications. Welcome to Race, Police, and Power in small-town America. For those new to us, ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. In 2018, we started the local reporting network to support local and regional newsrooms as they work on important investigative projects affecting their communities. In 2020, we partnered with the News & Observer to investigate the battle for racial justice in Graham, North Carolina, a small town with a long history of racial violence and aggressive policing and restrictive laws around protesting. For this event, ProPublica and the News & Observer have convened the two lead reporters from the story, local activists, and a historian for a timely discussion on race and policing. We also invited Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson, who declined, and Grand Police Chief Christie Cole, who did not respond. Now to introduce our speakers. Don Blagrove is an attorney and executive director of Emancipate, North Carolina, a nonprofit focused on dismantling structural racism and mass incarceration that has, among other things, organized legal defense for Black Lives Matter protesters across the state. Scott Nelson is a professor of history at the University of Georgia. He is an award-winning author who is written about Alamance County during Reconstruction, including in the book, Iron Confederacies. Ebony Pinnocks grew up in Alamance County and was involved in Black Lives Matter activism there throughout 2020. She has also worked in healthcare and public health outreach. Julia Wall is a visual journalist at the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she creates both daily and long-form content for online and print. Thank you to our panel for joining today. Also, this session is being recorded and a link to the video will be emailed tomorrow to everyone who registered. If you'd like to ask a question, you can click the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen and type it there. Our moderator today is Carly Brousseau. Carly is an investigative reporter at the News & Observer. Thanks again for joining us and thanks to McKinsey & Company for supporting this event. I'll let Carly take it from here. Thanks, Connor, for the introductions. I also want to thank ProPublica, which made this event and the reporting we'll be talking about possible. The News & Observer was part of ProPublica's local reporting network last year, and that meant that I was able to devote all my time to Alamance County and also draw on other resources from ProPublica's newsroom. T. Christian Miller was my editor-in-guide and lots of other people had a hand in the project. A little background on the journalism that brought us here. After Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd setting off protests across the country, I decided to revisit the Department of Justice lawsuit against Terry Johnson, the sheriff of Alamance County. Some years back, he's been accused of some of the country's worst racial profiling. And I wondered about the lawsuit's legacy. What if anything had changed? And what might that mean for the public debate about police accountability in small southern towns? Deep in the legal file, a government lawyer asked Sheriff Johnson, have you ever in your life attended a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan? Sheriff Johnson answered, no, sir. Well, I'll take that back. Yes, I have. I was in the Greensboro Klan Nazi shootout as an FBI agent. I've done surveillance at Klan's meeting. And then the page cut off. And the next one was missing. And that sent me on a journey trying to connect the past to the present. So I'm really excited to have all of you here for this discussion. So we can continue to make those connections together. Ebony, I'd like to start with you. Given that you grew up in Alamance County. What was that like? And how has your perception of the place and the people changed over time? So, I guess growing up in Alamance County was kind of weird because when I was younger, we kind of ignored the fact that racism even exists. Because as a child, you have friends of alcohol. And as far as you know, they love who you are, you don't know any difference. But as you started getting older, you know, that's where they're starting to act funny. I would say the major point in my life where I realized racism was real and it's the issue right here at Alamance County was one of my best friends in our school. She invited me to her house, but she had to tell me how to act in her house first because her mom was okay, but her stepdad was definitely racist. Her stepdad is also brothers of one of, I guess you could say one of the wealthiest men in Alamance County that owns a lot of stuff that we all support. We've all bought stuff from them. We've all given things. So anyway, I went to her house and it was like one in the bedroom and don't come out and he won't bother. So I'm like, well, she's my friend. She say, I'm safe. She say, and I was, she kept me safe. But I noticed that I will hear the mama and the stepfather arguing a lot. And she was like, well, we're gonna go outside and back and as we move towards the back, the argument kind of gravitated towards that way too. So that was the first time I was like 15, 16, that I realized that, okay, I can't ignore it anymore because it just slapped me in the face. I can't be friends with her anymore because it's causing a wedge in her household. So that was basically the first time I opened my eyes. This is not a thing that you just see on a movie. It's not dead. Slavery is not that far from where we are today. It's still here and that was, that was a big wake up call because I look at it right. How did you start to connect that experience with policing or what brought you into the streets? Can you talk about that connection? Well, the connection for me was I have children that are younger books. One is that was some state and I have one that's out on his own and I can no longer protect. I cannot protect them physically because they're not in my home. The only other way I felt I could say never was to actually get out here and start fighting. Start trying to be part of the solution instead of the problem because by not doing anything, I'm part of the problem also. So I had to start because I hadn't really been educating them on racism either because I felt like if you just stay in your lane, they'll stay in theirs and we never cross lanes. We don't have to worry about you because that's how I grew up. But then I mean just realizing how you remember your best friend, how that worked out like let's go ahead and do something about it. So that's what ended me in Brown last year. It's time to stop sitting on the couch and acting like it doesn't exist because I will say because I can't protect my kids. That was the big thing for me. Dawn, does this resonate with you and what you hear from other protesters across the state? Yes. Yes, it absolutely does resonate with me and I just need a minute because so very often we glaze over the trauma that racism causes to black people in America and especially to our children. There is this pre-just a position that our children and that black people should just be able to absorb these traumatic experiences and should never have the space or the audacity to think that we should be able to discuss the trauma of those events and acknowledge how hurtful they are and how they create generational trauma. So sorry, I just needed a minute to sit in that. But yeah, these are very similar stories that we hear all over the South, the South particularly, but especially as it relates to black folks who are born and raised in the South. There is just a certain unspoken set of norms that relate to how you interact with white people in your community and how your age absolutely determines what the rules are, right? And that is a reality that people deal with all over the state of North Carolina. And yes, I have children. I have two daughters myself. That is what drives me to do this work. And that is what drives most of us to do this work. And that is a reality that people deal with all over the state of North Carolina. And yes, I have children. I have two daughters myself. That is what drives me to do this work. And that is what drives most of us to do this work is that we do not want our children to have to fight and validate their humanity the way that we have to do over and over again. So, yes, what Ebony is saying to you is absolutely commiserate with what I hear statewide and nationally to be perfectly honest from people who have decided that now was the moment, especially in the wake of George Floyd, that now is the moment to become active. Now is the moment to say, I will no longer accept second class citizen. You mentioned intergenerational trauma which sort of brings us to the idea of history and I mean that's, I think, in many ways that shared across geography but also can be specific to geography and I'd like to turn to Scott for a little of his work on on the history of Alamance County. I know that Scott you've done a lot of work about Wyatt outlaw and that's a name I heard a lot in the streets in Ebony's mouth and many others. When Julie and I were out there so could you tell us about Wyatt outlaw and and how you see that story kind of translating forward. Wyatt outlaw was put to use dawn's phrase, the kind of peak of audacity, right he was somebody who pushed back against all of these ideas about what was acceptable for a black man to do right so he's in the US colored troops it's called in the Union army. And he fights, you know, alongside white soldiers against the Confederacy returns to Alamance County and he's the town constable. He organizes a group called the Royal Republican League of black men to and men are only the ones voting at this time to get them to think about voting and think about their citizenship and take pride in themselves and who they are and. creates a kind of peace he's friendly with both, he's biracial and he's friendly with both black and white folks in Alamance and the powers that be like Ebony is talking about are not happy with us. And so they, they organize the client and they, they attack him once in 1869 and. And then again in February of 1870 where they, where they hang him where they kill him where they where they beat him up in front of his six year old son and his mother and drag him to an elm tree and hang him in the center of of Graham and so that that the sort of heroism that took him to do all that to stand up for everybody in that community. But particularly black people in that community, it was was amazing and and it's he paid the highest price for for that audacity and recalling that that not just his death but the audacity to sort of stand up and fight, because I think what's exciting about the story of Ebony what did you think when you first hear that heard that story. When I first heard the story. First of all was what break into that it was the first time I heard it. To be someone black and from elements can you know nothing about yourself. It's kind of crazy. But when I first heard it was just. I don't know what we've always been here, and for there not to be any classes or anything in history but when we go to school to learn about this stuff right here in our own county, it was my role. I mean, Julia you've covered protests in a lot of places. It seemed to me with less experience and then you have that the history was coming out more often like what, what did you observe what jumped out at you about the experience of being at protests in this place compared to others. Yeah, I think that the big differences this very localized narrative and collective history that had been ignored for so long and people. They got together in order to have their voices heard and then perpetually still being ignored by people within the community by people in the local government by people in law enforcement that the reasons that they were there weren't really being heard and why it outlaw Although it became more popular within within the groups of people who were who were showing up to these protests, it was different from other places, because there was such a stake in in resurrecting this story for people who live there and grew up there and like being able to learn this story for the first time was a very intense experience and more and more people were learning about that in these at these protests. And, you know, kind of as the dust settled per se in the winter, there would be more focused events through groups like occupied Graham where they had a whole night dedicated to why it outlaw and they had made pamphlets about him. So it was just a much different take away and kind of concrete thing that came out of these, these events rather than events taking place in Durham or in Raleigh that were, you know, bigger cities and there may be bigger crowds but this story kind of tied everybody together to this place and even people who weren't from Elements County who were coming in to to attend these events, we're learning more about it and just kind of perpetuates the story and get brings it out to more people than I think have had ever heard it maybe. Don I can see your comment about this kind of history the story of why it outlaw being intentionally suppressed and that being part of systemic racism can you expand on that. I just think that it's so important that and I hear Ebony saying, and it's a part of living in a system and in a country that is so oppressive to us that we internalize so much of their oppression, as if it is ours and that it is ours to own and it is not. It is not your fault that you don't know who outlaw was or you didn't know who he was, because it is intentionally suppressed from us, because the people who have power. Understand that it is in their benefit it is the benefit of upholding white supremacy it is in the benefit of upholding systemic and institutional racism that they do not tell an accurate depiction of the history and the role that black folks played in that history, especially in places like Alamance County right, and which is ironic because, as we taught as we moved to talk about these Confederate statues, these folks are so so deeply rooted and committed to history to preserving history. Right, as they if you let them tell it, but we can't be gas lit by these non racial non racial. Excuses for sanitizing racism and hatred because that's really what this is. And I think that but again, it is not ours to own that it is not our fault that we don't know these things you know I do train is all over the state about the roles of district attorneys and judges and sheriffs and people will say to me who are who have been politically active their entire lives. I'm embarrassed that I don't know these things and I said oh no don't be embarrassed, because the power of the system part of the way the system holds on to its power is to obfuscate this information. There is a very, a very intentional and a very intentional and deliberate exclusion of our stories from American history and it is American history. It's just not the American history that they want to talk. Scott I know you were really taken by one of the signs that that I think Julie also recorded at some of the protests in Alamance County, especially late last year that said Google wide outlaw. I'm glad to hear you talk about that and also, you know, how in your work you found that this story or the, the broader history of kind of what wide outlaw was doing and, and his, his fellow. The people who was working with an Alamance County, what they were trying to achieve and did achieve how that story kind of got vanquished to us. It's the, in fact, just as Don saying that there was a tree right where he was hanged and people knew where that tree was in the 1880s and 1890s and then the tree fell down. And what did they replace the tree with, but a statue of a Confederate soldier who wasn't there, right, right, the man who stood to defend Graham. Right, was out was wide outlaw. He used to defend the town against these plans man. And when his memory goes away from the people who remember it, it's replaced by, you know, a marble Confederate soldier. It's a, it's a horrible thing. And what outlaw wanted to do was to create a kind of multiracial democracy that was that was what he saw he, he made friendships he was a carpenter. He made coffins but he also made, he built the house that he was in, and he did a lot of building for the North Carolina railroad and he wanted to create this this multiracial democracy at that time headed by the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, and in which black and white people stood together. And when he was killed the governor Holden at the time overreacted in the, in the sense that he sent in troops. And that was, it was the right reaction to send in troops and to capture these people. But the result was that people that white people got scared when they sent in troops after the people who hanged wide outlaw. And it broke apart that democracy people. It drove people white people into the Democratic Party the party of the Klan's been the party of the old Confederacy, and help crack apart that multiracial democracy that very brief multiracial democracy in North Carolina 1865 until, until 1870. And, and when it broke in North Carolina broken the rest of the south that was, this is the center of alamance, right, which is the center of North Carolina, which is the center of the south. He stood by and kind of built help build that that coalition. And when they killed them, as they did many other black leaders in that period. They, they, they destroyed, they, they broke it and then they, then they covered all their tracks, right and that's what that monument is, is covering all the tracks. So, anyways, that's, that's my sense of how, how in the, in the sense of what's happened in 150 years ago that's why we have to remember it is because it's, they want to cover those tracks of the people who were trying to build something that was, that was a different kind of North Carolina and different kind of south. One of the things that happened in the course of our reporting is that there was also an effort to kind of reclaim white outlaw as a member of law enforcement and that was. Well, I guess that to some degree proceeded our reporting but Julia went to an event in which he was actually memorialized. Could you talk about that a little bit Julia what were your observations. Sure. There was a fallen officers event in, I want to say it was in early May in Alamance County and and there's like I think it was during National Police Week. And they had had a similar event that is also on the county's YouTube page because they they uploaded it to their YouTube page when they did the ceremony last year, in which they for the first time in the country's white outlaws name into the fallen officers memorial for Alamance County. And what's interesting, a lot of people don't know about white outlaw and maybe Scott could speak more to this because my knowledge of it. Why is very limited but there aren't any existing photos of him. But if you do a quick Google search a photo of another man pops up in relation to white outlaw and that is the man whose photo is printed. It's in a very big frame that is carried and placed into this officers memorial now for two years in a row. And it's not why it outlaw. It's, it's, I'm the man's name is escaping me. It's casual. Yes, it's casual hold it's not why it outlaw and for two years in a row now they have presented it as why it outlaw in these fallen officers ceremonies. And also, like, kind of tangentially like saw a conversation on Instagram going on when the local History Museum had put up a new exhibit and they didn't include why it outlaw in it and people were very upset about that it just feels like this information is now very much in the public sphere and the fact that that's casual hold and not why it outlaw has been missed on the folks bringing these photos to these ceremonies. And what else has, has thoughts on that kind of like the shifting legacy of white outlaw. I just want to ask the, ask the professor. Holt is one of the, one of the leaders of the clan at that time what is who is this person that they're showing us. No, no, no, there's, there's multiple holds. And so, so hold is the name of an old planter family. And so there were white holds and black holds and this was a black hole that was that was the image was of, and he was, you know, this man was did know why it outlaw he actually he didn't see the murder but he shots were fired at him. But the name hold comes from because he was owned by, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to tap down my outrage now then. I was like, wait a minute, what. No, he, but hold was I outlaw it's difficult to know what he looked like but he wasn't wasn't as dark as the as the man who they use in the image and yeah he had a mustache I think and he was he was sort of. Yeah, but but it is a shame that that that's it's funny because the thing that's been perverse about the 150 years later is that white outlaw was the head of the police right he was a town constable he was a person hold he was a person holding that town together right. And, and then he was killed and 150 years later that's not what elements looks like right that's not what Graham looks like as I'm sure. Ebony can say that that what we see in elements of policing is in different hands, and people are in danger in part because of the police. So Ebony, maybe you can kind of take this up to the present, like what are perceptions of law enforcement in Alamance County now. Well, um, first of all, they're not here to protect and serve. They only protect certain people, just from being in the streets. The Confederates, they could get in our face yell at us, fitted us, put their hands on us, they could do whatever they wanted to. It did not matter they could say what they wanted to. The police would not bother you, but you know, as soon as we say anything, we, if we say a curse word all of a sudden, we're wrong, but they have called us the N word. They've talked about our children. They've done anything, everything they could standing right there in our face. My first time I was ever called the N word to my face by a white person that was in Brown last year. I mean, I had heard it heard it spewed before, but not directed towards me. I actually had somebody stand in my face directed towards me with the sheriff standing out standing directly beside him just letting us know that that that statue wasn't coming down my face pointing his finger at us like this, like we were five year old children. That statue will not come down in our faces while they were spewing racist racial slurs at us. And they didn't know. But if we stepped up sidewalk, we went to jail. If we didn't move as soon as they told us to, we went to jail over with pepper spray or our children were being toppled over by police. Where the other side, they could, they could stand on over the bricks and hooting holler and outside with alcohol doing everything they wanted to. And they wouldn't do nothing but protect them. They would protect them every time. We've seen one arrest. I think, and they literally took the person around the corner and let him fall. What does that make you think, Don? I mean, it's, I don't know. It's like, you go down there and give it on your energy and you go with a positive mind. Like we go out there and we have those difficult conversations with people that we would never talk to because we're human beings too. And if you don't like me, I don't like you, but I'm no better than this. I know that we, if we talk to each other, we can coincide with each other and be okay. I know this. So when you go out there with a positive attitude, things are going to get better because if those people are out there, then those are the ones that you can talk to. The people who you can't talk to, they don't come out there. So this is your chance. So now I'm taking my chance to talk to you, even though I know you hate me because I'm a skin color. We can have good conversations, but then here comes the police who batch and that's when everything starts to change. It's not the conversations that we had with each other as the community. It was when the police got there is when they started a certain being aggressive for no reason, starting stuff, inciting riots, because we would be calm. We might be yelling and fussing, but I mean, it's something that we're all passionate about. They're passionate about their preserving their history and we're passionate about being part of it. So it's like the police is the one who calls all the problems. So Ebony, I just need to jump in right here because what you're saying right now is so important. And it's something that so many people who are not on the front lines don't understand. Here in Raleigh emancipate and see was one of many other organizations in a coalition called. Oh, I can't remember the name of it. I'm sorry, y'all, it's been a long day. But Raleigh demands justice. Lord have mercy in a coalition called Raleigh demands justice week where we posted a and helped organize a large protest on May 30. In response to George Floyd's murder. My oldest daughter who was at the time, 20, I think, had never been to a full blown protest like this before. And one of the things that she took away from it was this is what she said to me when we got back in the car and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Mama, I didn't realize that police started right. Right. And if you're not out there, you don't know that it is the police that very often are the aggressors that are the people that antagonize and bring violence and bring hostility to a place that is really there for where to a place where really we could have a meeting of the minds where really people could have some real powerful exchanges of ideas. But again, Ebony, because you grow you on fire tonight. Again, that doesn't happen by accident. There is absolutely a reason and you nailed it. The reason why law enforcement's it is used to put this wedge between the two sides because what they know for sure what the system knows for sure. Is that if these two sides were able to talk, what we would find is that we have much more in common than we have not in common. What we would find is that if we were working together towards a common goal of community safety and advancement and economic support that we will be so much more powerful that my friends is what they want us to not do and make no sense of that is exactly why law enforcement municipal law enforcement in America was created. It was created not about safety or community, it was created about to maintain social norms, and those social norms were the ones that uphold white supremacy and oppression of black folks and were to advance the stereotypes, the myths, and the misnomers that exist to keep white people and black people, or white people and brown people, not talking to one person and not having real dialogue. This is what systemic and institutional racism looks like, and this is how it exists and this is how it shows up in our lives. And law enforcement is being used as a tool to advance those oppressive systems. And we've got to be able to name that and call it when we see it and Ebony you you killing it tonight girl killing it. I think it's back in time a little bit it seems like we've talked about why, you know, the, the death of white outlaw the killing of white outlaw setting in in motion what follow, could you kind of, I guess set that up for us. And thinking about what's almost saying about maintaining social norms, right. And, and so there was a, there was a way of policing before the Civil War and the way of policing was the basically you, you'd call on white people poor white people to act as to round people up, right, to chase after enslaved people that had disappeared to, to, and so the enforcement of social norms was very informal. And it was, it was get a patrols called the patroller system. And when people were interviewed by people were interviewed the 1920s they called the Klansman the patrollers, right so referring to that old system of social norms, where black people did one thing and white people did another and, and quiet out let's try to break that 150 years ago 152 years of 53 years ago, by, by creating a police force that was the town constables that just enforce the police just enforce the piece, right. And that they could not stand that they could not accept that they could not abide by that. And so they broke they waited until on February 26, they, they came in that midnight and, and shot and killed him. They tried to get Caswell Holt but they they went to outlaw's house first and Holt discovered it and he got out he was able to escape but, but they were trying to eliminate all the constables right everybody who was part of a system that was not their informal social norms that was the thing they tried to break and they broke it on 152 years ago, and they brought back the slave patrols, and they brought back those social norms that, you know that had been briefly extinguished for a few years. For a few years after the Civil War. And so we don't know about that time because, you know, all the effort is event about making that go away and that's the funny thing about the police kind of claiming white outlaw to as a fallen soldier and you know fallen fallen officer or something like that, because the kind of police that he represented was a police that was really about law and order that was really about protecting everyone in that community and that police has gone and it's been gone for 152 years in Alamance County. And I just very, very quickly because there was so much that I wanted to add in this conversation, but I most importantly want to say that today in Raleigh house bill 805 past mostly along party lines, the house, and that isn't the and anti black lives matter anti riot protest bill right it is on its way now to governor Cooper's desk, and it is imperative that everyone on this call, call Cooper and tell him to veto this terrible piece of legislation, and not only do I want you to call and tell him to veto I want you to tell other people to call and tell him to veto, because again this is what institutional racism looks like, and this is how it becomes part of our systems when you create laws that on their face, look as though they are race neutral, but based on what Ebony is telling us about what is happening in Graham County is that she is being called racial slurs, they are being the black lives matter protesters are who are who are being peaceful, who are being who are protesting and exercising their constitutional right to protest are being treated as though they are an eight lead criminal, whereas those folks who are actually displaying hateful criminal behavior are being given a pass like in the video that like in the documentary that was produced, where the black lives matter protesters one of whom was I remember just trying to go across the street and get food was treated so roughly. And a white protester was arrested, not dragged up the steps of the courthouse, but taken into a restaurant, a place that was much less, much less confrontational much less stigmatizing as it relates to to being justice involved. This is why it feels like these that are burst out of racism no matter what they want to say, and no matter how race neutral the language is, this is why we have to stop these types of legislations from more deeply embedding racism and bias into our systems and last thing I'm sorry I was quick and I lied. We need for people that don't look like Ebony and I to say that. Right. We need for you. Because until white folks decide that this system is egregious that this system is one that is unworthy. It's unworthy to be called American. Right. And they turn on it and demand change. Not just because they have skin in the game but because it is the right thing to do. Until that happens. Ebony and I will continue to be in the streets and yelling and screaming and protesting and demanding our humanity be recognized. And people that are out there who have the power to recognize our humanity. Don't care what we think they care what you think. One of the things that I thought was particularly powerful, witnessing what happened in Graham over the last year was that there was kind of a physical embodiment of of some of what you're talking about Don of it was we were talking about the physical public and access to it and equal representation within it, whether that was through monuments or just physical presence. I know that there have, there has been other legislation as well that sort of touches on some of some of the issues that came up in Graham and in other cities. In the post George Floyd in the bill that you're talking about. There was an effort to make to increase the penalties for being present at what is deemed a riot. And so those those the sort of definitions were in flux and expanded. There was another bill that I thought was interesting that came up a few months ago that was proposed by Senator Amy Gailey who was the chair of the Alamance County Board of Commissioners and that bill related to disruptions at public meetings. Julie, I don't know if you want to describe the public meeting that we went to where where folks were trying to get in and and sort of what your observations are about. Sure yeah and and Ebony was there as well. I can't remember if you came inside Ebony but I know you were outside the courthouse that night as well. You did come in as well yeah so I'd also like to hear your take on it because mine was very much focused through the camera, but what I saw was a board of commissioners that was threatened by the presence of activists in their public meeting and it was the first, first opportunity to make public comment in person after what happened on October 31 and almost immediately upon people entering in order to settle down and into the room and wait for the public comment section. There was an altercation over where to sit because of social distancing and several officers in not riot gear but in full vests came out from wherever they were, and kind of postured at everyone, and then I left the room and and some some pretty awful events happened after that on and the elements kind of sheriff's office do not wear body cameras so we could not see those arrests and full after the fact but Ebony what was your experience like that night. So, I think we had had a little press conference steps before we talked or something like that, if I'm recalling it correctly, and then several of us started to try to go in. We had certain stuff on us that we can bring that in can bring that in so they were already harassing the start of the tears from coming in so once we got in we went upstairs. And when we walked through the door, everybody in the whole room stopped talking. I can't remember who was speaking at the time at the podium but he looked like he's saying several ghosts. Everybody turned around and started looking at us and we just, we made our way to our seats and we were the first group in I believe so we were super people quiet, but downstairs, we can hear a lot of ruckus. I'm not quite sure what it was, but it was important we got up and started down the stairs to calm them down because we didn't know exactly what was going on. Eventually, that crowd made it upstairs and that's when the arrest started so I didn't see that myself, but I just know just to go in there and sit down and be quiet. They let us know we weren't welcome. You can tell the conversation changes every time we step in the room. So that was one of those things where they kind of stopped looking at the paper and started looking at us. And the meeting is not for us so read your paper, but they stopped. You can tell the whole conversation change when we got in the room. I mean, what one of the things that makes me think about is this question of sort of like, what is real and how video has come to help us define what is real. And we're now some of the reporting that we've done since the story published is about gaining access to law enforcement video. And we've had a difficult time doing that there have been a lot of issues related to law enforcement agencies, having video to start with as Julia pointed out the sheriff's office. Well they actually said in a court hearing that they would never have body camera footage that was what one of the attorneys said. Grand police do have body cameras but that has not in every case been turned over to the district attorney, or in some cases to the judge when there is a petition for for that footage which is required in North Carolina. Under North Carolina law you have to petition a judge in order to see that footage in many cases, unless you are requesting as somebody who's represented in the footage itself. And that's another thing that's also being debated in the legislature right now so at like in conclusion, I would love to hear you all talk about kind of how in this moment now, we move forward to to define kind of like what's real but how does this get back in the public square in the public debate in a way that's productive or possible. I'll jump in real quick. So first I like to say it's kind of weird, and it's hard to approach anything. If I didn't know you and I see you in the store, like I'm a really happy person I speak to everybody I don't know if I can speak to you. And like I see other white people looking at me like I want to speak to her, and they don't know if they can speak to me. So, I don't know. I guess the way it's just been placed between us as black and white people right now we're going to have to have those difficult conversations and for that wedge back out because before it wasn't necessarily there. We've had to face reality, and we have to just deal with it so we've got to be able to talk to each other without the politicians and everything else and it's just community members and get it back on track because it sucks not knowing whether it's okay to be your neighbor's friend or not. That's beautiful Ebony and I think also but again, like I said Ebony is bad and a thousand tonight y'all because really this is about reimagining what it means and how we change systems. How we dismantle system. What we have to do is give ourselves permission to think outside the box about the way that we interact with one another about the way we talk to one another and about the way we relate to one another. Okay. And when we do that when we don't allow these racist systems to dictate how we communicate with one another, how we interact with one another. Then we get to the place where Ebony is talking about where we can have these real genuine conversations where we can listen where we are, we are not so deeply bogged down into ideological tribalism. And are more interested in talking about our day to day lives because let me be real. Most of racism is a is a is a terrible terrible mechanism to help control capitalism and help control capital. Right. So what we have to remember, especially now in a time of COVID where poor people. I don't care what you look like poor people are catching it right now, and we'll continue to catch it. And the one thing that they don't want is poor people talking to one another. Right. Because if we were if they keep us focused on who lives next door to us and what kind of stupid Confederate flag we hanging, none of us are paying attention to the fact that all of our poor behinds are getting a victim. Right. And that's what they want. So we, we have to, we have to untether ourselves from traditional systems of interaction, untether ourselves. And our thoughts and our minds from parties from political parties from, you know, identities and things of that nature. And really think about what makes us more alike than not alike. And when we do that, that is a powerful thing I tell you what though you be careful. And that's what got Fred Hampton killed in Chicago, right, was bringing together people who had common goals and seeing beyond the artificial barriers that are created to advance economic to advance capitalism in America. That's what we got to do. That's the next step. Okay, I just wanted to, I was thinking about the public square, Alby and Terje, who is a friend of white Alice, a white, white friend of white Alice who were novels, and put put outlaw in the novels. He said that the biggest problem in the south is that there aren't town meetings, the town hall meetings that you see in New England and Midwest we don't see them in the south. And he said, without town meetings. There's, there's no dialogue and so that ebony walking in with other with other black people right in that town meeting, and everyone's shutting up all of a sudden because this is not for them. That's that speaks to exactly this problem that that we need a kind of town meeting right and that's what that square is about that's why that square is there. And putting up a fence around it around the Confederate monument is just breaking up that public and we need a public we need a public place where we can we can hash these things out and and not have provocateurs which is frankly what the police were in this case. They were Asian provocateurs they were there to make trouble so they could, you know, beat in heads and stop it. And so, seizing the public square and to and making it a place where people talk to each other is, is I think the thing that's missing in this in the south. And, and that's, that's where the healing is going to be and I and I think town meetings. Part of it is just showing up at those town meetings and recognize it's just not for those people. It's for it's for all of us they they're there to represent us and if there's not enough space there. That's their problem. And the reason there isn't enough space is intentional y'all. I do want to also just uplift as we talk about coming together and having these community dialogues outside of the the norms that are created for us. I am actually involved very deeply right now in a in some litigation that's going on in alamance around where where some black women who were participating and who were courageous enough to speak up and speak out against a person who they believe said some really horrible things, and is in a position where she is being trusted with the lives of folks right. They spoke up and spoke out against her, and this person is using the alamance legal system and the innate racism that is baked into them to bring a defamation lawsuit against these black women and using your legal system to terrorize them and to make them fearful and to bully them. So I'm going to ask you all to come out the week of October 4 to that Confederate statue that stands on literally on the courts of where justice is supposed to be doled out and start having those conversations. You all come every day the week of October 4 and have conversations with one another about the way that alamance county is using your legal system to further racism to further hatred, but most importantly to silence the voice of the people. October 4 y'all I hope the week of October 4 we hope to see y'all out there having these good conversations. Let's expand our questions to the audience and see see how we can in this most immediate sense. Yeah thank you all for the very lively discussion and for the robust number of questions submitted. We'll try and get to a few here. So I'm going to start off like a lot of you are talking about the importance of finding common ground, and that as a starting place and what you know one one person asked if there are any instances of that happening like while you are out protesting or just in the course of your work where you know you did find some common ground to connect with other people. I'm jumping. Absolutely. We've had a lot of hooking up. We've sat down and talked to some people who necessarily went and talked to us and we made a lot of groundwork with them and just came to a conclusion that we all want to protect who we are. We all want to know who we are and when you don't know who it is it does make you angry and you do get out of character. And so we have made friends and people that we keep in contact with that was on the other side. And they're not working on their family and I'm working on my family because that's how it's got to work. We got to pass it on. So it has been some good conversations coming. And then another sounds like it came from a resident of Alamance County who's asking you know this is an engaged person who maybe has limited time but they're wondering like you know how they can, you know, best spend their energy and time to you know support the causes you all are advocating for and like, you know, how might you suggest they, you know, mobilize their time and resources. I guess that's me again. Honestly, I have kind of pulled back from protesting myself. What I do is build a community. We have these community events where we go to some of the four areas and we might have a cookout on depending on what is going on at the time if it was getting vaccinated or whatever. We just basically build rapport and then whatever we have available that we can help build these communities up. We present that to them because otherwise they may not get that. So you might not want to protest. It's not everybody. Everybody doesn't want their face out there. But there's just several things to do within the community. It's different organizations that I always donate to. We always need water and stuff to protest in different places. It's a lot. You don't have to be on 4th Street. What are the names of the organizations in Graham? There's several. You do have occupied Graham. They have food boxes in different areas. They have one on Washington Street. They have one at the Muse in front of the Muse in Graham. You can donate. My parents should be good. It's there. You can also go in the Muse and donate directly to Dion. She's the owner there. Anything that you donate to her definitely gets out to the protesters and to the community or wherever it needs to go. So that's like a great spot to go to if you want to donate. And also, y'all, the most powerful thing you can do is use your personal influence within your sphere of influence, right? You don't have to do some grandiose gesture. The most important thing you can do is have these difficult conversations with the people in your lives, with your coworkers, with your friends, with the people that you go to church with, and help them to challenge some of the things that they believe to be true. Help them challenge and break up some of those norms. The most powerful thing that any of you can do is talk to your own people. Talk to people around you and help influence people around you. I tell folks all the time, I can do lots of protests and blah, blah, blah, and lawyer in and all that good stuff. But the most important thing I will ever do is raise two daughters into adult women who believe that a better world exists. That is the most important thing you do. Create better people for the world. You do that by talking to folks. One more question for the journalists. So what was one of the most difficult parts of the reporting process for this story? And then someone also asked to Julia specifically, as a visual journalist, what did you feel was most important to include in the visual telling of this story? I'll answer that one quickly and then I'll pass the other one off to Carly. I think one of the most important things to include in visual coverage of a story like this is as many sources of video as you can find and get permission to use. I watched lots of Ebony's Facebook Live videos and other people who I became friends with on Facebook over time. I think that being there a lot of the time and talking to people and putting our faces in kind of people so that they knew who you were was incredibly important for both parts of the reporting. But piecing together different perspectives of things that we were trying to report and improve a point with about what was actually going on there and the truth there I think is one of the most important parts of visual coverage. I think the answer is quite similar for me. So, it was clear to us sort of early on that to tell this story completely and with as much like fidelity to reality as we could we needed the trust of people on the ground protesting and that did require being there a lot and listening a lot. It required building trust and listening to people who were counter protesting and that was that was hard to find access points right to be able to represent that perspective. In a way that they would recognize it all which was I think important for the credibility of the story that that also took a lot of time and a lot of background research I mean there's so many interviews that are not in this not represented in the story itself just like hundreds of people in the community to understand a small town that doesn't necessarily like outsiders always or to be portrayed by outsiders and you know we took that seriously and then the third component was this law enforcement component which also has felt misrepresented by the news and observer and other media outlets in the past. So that was really the hardest thing was building trust and a lot of the solutions that was an incredible investment of time to try to really understand. Yeah. Great. Well that's our time for today. I just want to again thank our panelists, you all were great for this excellent conversation and our moderator, Carly Bruce so thank you to the audience for joining us today and for your thoughtful questions. Again, this event has been recorded. So you'll receive an email tomorrow with a full recording of today's video. We will also post this on our YouTube channel so you can share it with friends who might not have made it from all of us at ProPublica. Thank you for joining us and have a great rest of your evening. We'll see you next time.