Documenting Black Lives Matter protests from Rockford to Richmond

Black lives matter. Defund the police. Demand equity. Denounce racism.

I know activists shout these slogans in the streets of Rockford, Illinois, and in Richmond, Virginia, because I document the protests as a current and former resident and photojournalist in these two cities, respectively.

Since late May Rockford activists have joined others in cities across the country and across the world in revolting against injustices ingrained in our systems of law enforcement, health care and the economy.

As a photojournalist for the Rockford Register Star I followed nearly every footstep of our local activists to document their actions on the streets, in the parks, outside the jail complex and businesses, the courthouse and at City Hall. I’ve covered this story from the perspectives of the protesters and the police. I have literally stood between them during peaceful and violent interactions.

As a proud native of southwest Virginia, and multiple-time Richmond resident, I have a unique and close relationship with the area and special knowledge of its people and history. I used to live in several neighborhoods of Richmond from 2012 through 2017, while I freelanced and worked for our sister paper, the (Petersburg, Va.) Progress-Index. I’ve covered stories about the KKK, public displays of the Confederate flag, racial and economic inequality since 2012. I was interviewed on June 14, 2020, by a reporter for Paris Match Magazine about my reporting on the subjects.

Read the story in USA Today for which colleagues from the Progress-Index and I contributed reporting.

Most recently, I visited Richmond again during my vacation week of June 29 through July 4, documenting the Black Lives Matter movement there. (This was a pre-planned vacation to visit family. I traveled there alone and stayed with my sister, whose health care job puts her at an equal risk of exposure to COVID-19 as I have from my newspaper job. It was a better alternative to staying in a beach house with my elderly father and stepmother).

Although Richmond was once briefly the capital of the Confederate States of America, I’m happy to report that Richmond has evolved beyond its past as the largest East coast trade port for enslaved people. Though the effects of Jim Crow, redlining and oppressive public housing practices still limit equitable opportunities for poor people and people of color.

As my vacation week neared, I could not avoid my friends’ and former sources’ constant social media posts, the headlines in national newspapers, international magazines and major television newscasts reporting that the city’s famous avenue of Confederate statues was the site of daily protest rallies and nightly conflicts between police and protesters.

Several statues memorializing men who led Confederate soldiers to battle against the Union army were vandalized or ripped off their stone pedestals. Protesters removed a statue of Christopher Columbus and dragged it into a nearby lake. For several nights in a row, protesters occupied a public space only to be forcibly removed by city and state police shooting rubber bullets and filling the air with tear gas.

It was only a matter of time before more statues came down, either by the people or by city contractors. I wanted to be there to see it happen, and I needed to document it with my camera.

Since Gannett, the parent company of the Rockford Register Star, does not have a sister paper in Richmond, I wrote to my local editor and to the assistant managing editor for visuals of USA Today, the national newspaper owned by Gannett, to let me contribute photography coverage while I was in the city. The main editor to approve this idea was on furlough at that time. So it was not until the day I arrived in Richmond that I got the OK to start filing photos to the newspaper’s network.

I had a feeling Richmond was going to make more headlines starting when the city’s mayor Levar Stoney promised to initiate removal of more Confederate monuments starting on July 1.

Richmond is full of passionate people trying to make the city a more livable place. They are fighting against harmful gentrification while supporting better housing initiatives. They are fighting for a healthy James River watershed, which provides drinking water, crucial animal habitat and human recreational opportunities. And they are fighting to enhance constitutional gun rights, voting rights and free speech.

Watch the video above and scroll through the related photo gallery for a collection of my photographs made the week of June 29 through July 4, in Richmond.

Scott P. Yates: syates@rrstar.com; @scottpyates