Charles Town Groups Stage Anti-Trump Protest, Invoking Memory Of Civil Rights Icon

“Get in trouble,” read posters pasted outside the historic Jefferson County Courthouse Thursday evening. “Good trouble. Necessary trouble.”

Quoting the late Congressman John Lewis, the signs aimed to invoke the legacy of a civil rights leader and apply his message to the contemporary political moment. The signs marked one element of a broader demonstration that led dozens of residents to line the streets of downtown Charles Town, picket signs in hand.

The Thursday protest was the latest in an ongoing series of demonstrations coordinated across the United States to critique the administration of President Donald Trump. Last month, groups across the Mountain State held “No Kings” demonstrations in opposition to a range of Trump-backed policies, from cuts to Medicaid to the growing number of deportations.

For Donaldson Twyman, president of the Jefferson County chapter of the NAACP, honoring Lewis’s legacy means advocating for “equality,” “civil rights” and “doing what is right.”

The NAACP helped coordinate the event alongside the Jefferson County chapter of Indivisible — a national activist group that seeks to “fight authoritarianism,” according to its website — and Hope in Alliance, a local grassroots organization that says it aims to protect “equality, human rights and democracy.”

“Any time that we can get together and bring our community together and peacefully talk about the direction that we need to go instead of the direction that we’re going — it’s got to be a great thing,” said Twyman, a lifelong resident of Harpers Ferry. “This whole thing to me is very positive, not only for the community but for the county.”

Ranson resident Stephen Stahley is a member of Indivisible, and said the group was eager to stand “in opposition to so much [of what] is going on in the country today,” including mass deportations and tariffs.

Stahley said organizers were especially excited to pay tribute to the memory of Lewis in a way that felt actionable.

For Stahley, “good trouble” today means to “raise our voices in defense of democracy, in defense of the LGBTQ community, in defense of people that are marginalized [and] on behalf of the immigrants who are being rounded up.”

“I think the message is going to be that people really care about these issues,” he said. “What is gratifying is that we are part of a national movement. … It is saying to elected officials, saying to fellow citizens, to anyone who will listen that there is deep concern about what’s going on.”

Stahley added he was also motivated to attend the demonstration to voice frustration over cuts to funding for public media, a service he described as “needed” and “appreciated” by the public.

“This is an institution we have to have. We have to preserve it,” he said.

Lewis served as a Georgia congressman for more than three decades and spent his career pushing for civil rights and racial equality.

In 1965, he led a days-long march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, bringing together thousands of demonstrators to call for equal voting rights and racial justice. Lewis died at age 80 on July 17, 2020, exactly five years before Thursday’s protest.

“He walked and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King,” Twyman said. He was “one of the last living legends that we know about.”