This episode about a Black Lives Matter march in the tiny town of Kingwood was recently honored with a 2022 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The Kingwood BLM Rally set up a flash point. Black protestors and their allies faced off with heavily-armed white people who say Kingwood has no race problem. The event exposed the raw seam of rage that’s come to define racism in this country. In this episode, host Trey Kay speaks with West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker, who is pushing back at the fear and outrage of racial hatred in America.
2020 presented new levels of outrage over police killings of Black and brown people in this nation. Police killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor which prompted protests, marches and rallies to denounce racially motivated police brutality.
A Black Lives Matter (BLM) march in Kingwood, West Virginia set up a flash point for that tiny town. Black protestors and their allies faced off with white people who say Kingwood has no race problem. The angry white crowd outnumbered BLM marchers and showed the raw seam of rage that has come to define racism in this country.
In this Us & Them episode, host Trey Kay speaks with West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, a woman pushing back at the fear and outrage of racial hatred in America.
This episode, which was originally posted in Jan. 2021, has been honored with a 2022 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond.
Chris Jones
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100 Days In Appalachia
Kingwood BLM March organizer Frank Goines walks with West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker. Walker wears body armor under her shirt.
Chris Jones
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100 Days In Appalachia
BLM marcher at the Kingwood Rally passes a counter protester wearing a Nazi SS shirt with a swastika tattooed on his hand. Other counter protesters shouted insults and racial slurs at BLM marchers.
Chris Jones
/
100 Days In Appalachia
As BLM marchers made their way through the streets of Kingwood, they passed armed counter protestors shouting racial epithets .
Chris Jones
/
100 Days In Appalachia
West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker marches with a BLM activist on one arm and a counter protester on the other in an attempt to deescalate tension during a Black Lives Matter march in Kingwood, West Virginia in September 2020.
Robby Moore usually doesn’t put his work in exhibits he curates. But this time he had something he felt he needed to express. Moore’s the executive director of the Beckley Art Center (BAC.)
“My whole life I’ve experienced sort of a silent racism,” Moore said. “Some of that is because we think of the civil rights movement in the distant past but it’s really close. My parents went to segregated high schools. I still live in a neighborhood that for many of my friends and neighbors when I tell them where I live you get a certain look and sometimes it goes beyond the look they just simply express that that’s ‘the bad part of town.
“I’ve lived here for 41 years and I think it’s a very nice part of town. It’s my home.”
Robby Moore
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Robby Moore created a piece called “Black History Month” for the art exhibition called Social Studies.
The BAC’s Dan and Cynthia Bickey Art Gallery is hosting the Social Studies exhibition. He says it’s meant to bring deep, thoughtful conversation about social studies and social justice.
“We have pieces that address mountaintop removal, poverty, women’s rights, voting, censorship, gun violence, racism and the Black Lives Matter movement,” Moore said.
Courtesy, Robby Moore
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Paula Clendenin created a piece called, “White Wash,” that’s part of the art exhibition called “Social Studies.”
The exhibition includes 14 West Virginia artists and one artist from Virginia/Pennsylvania. Some of the work was inspired during the pandemic, like finding something to do with all of the plastic bags that seemed to accumulate in homes across the country.
“Normally, I would go physically to the store and use reusable bags,” said artist and Tamarack Foundation programming manager Domenica Queen. “Because I wanted to stay out of the stores and not only protect myself, but also not add my risk factors to the situation. I ended up ordering, curbside pickup groceries pretty regularly. There were plastic bags coming in from that.”
Courtesy Robby Moore
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Domenica Queen created a piece called “Overlap” by rug hooking with plastic bags for the art exhibition called Social Studies.
She’s also an artist who creates with paint. During the lockdown of the pandemic, she felt uninspired so she sat down her paint brushes and picked up the Appalachian tradition of rug hooking with a modern, plastic, twist. Instead of using fabric, Queen used plastic in her rugs.
“You might not consider it, but art supplies do get kind of pricey,” Queen said. “It’s really fun to be able to be really exuberant with my use of the material. I don’t have to be conservative. I don’t have to think, ‘well, I’m gonna have to buy another tube of paint or another canvas.’ I mean, it’s trash. I’m playing with trash, so there’s no waste that’s going to happen.”
Queen learned the technique from fellow artist Susan Feller. Feller says it’s a forgivable craft.
“Take my five minute lesson in how to use the hook and go with it,” Feller said. “I don’t care what fabric you use, use plastic bags for all I care.”
Susan Feller
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Each loop is made by pushing the hook through loose weave of backing to pull up the strip of fabric (or yarns) when the loop is up, the hook moves on to another hole just far enough away to be hidden with the next loop. On and on until done. Changing strips is by cutting fabric off on top, and hooking a new color in the same hole.
Feller uses rug-hooking pieces to create what she calls an honest view of her surroundings in West Virginia.
“I think there’s a beautiful story to tell with our natural surroundings,” Feller said. “We live here in the Appalachian in the Potomac Highlands. I look out on a forest. So it’s gorgeous.
“But as we’re driving on the manmade highways that go scenically, we see the windmills and the turbine and that type of utility. We see the coal processing and down in the lower part of the state, certainly the mountaintop removal. Those things are just subtle awareness for people traveling through as tourists. But I do know that all of us live amongst it and are in conflict.”
Courtesy
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Susan Feller’s piece called “Mountaintop Removal Puzzle” is part of the Social Studies exhibition at the Beckley Art Center.
Some of Feller’s work is also part of the “Social Studies” exhibition at the Beckley Arts Center. The framed pieces of carefully hooked fabric might look pretty, but the title has a much deeper story. It’s called “Mountaintop Removal Puzzle.”
Feller, like Moore and other artists in this showcase, hopes to create conversations around these social issues.
Domenica Queen hopes those conversations include questions.
“I’m not really looking for people to have a certain interpretation,” Queen said. “I’m just trying to fill their head with questions. Is that plastic? What was that before? Why did they make those shapes?
“I mostly want people to have questions because questions are really more useful than answers most of the time, especially when you’re talking about hoping for change. Change only comes through asking questions.”
Courtesy Robby Moore
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Mollie Schaidt created a piece called, “Dad’s Legs Are Breaking Down, But He Still Has to Work,” for the art exhibition called Social Studies at the Beckley Art Center.
The artists shared some photos of their work for this story, but they suggest visiting the gallery to experience this exhibit and take in all of the textures — in person — to get a better appreciation for the show.
The exhibition will be up through June 19 in Beckley.
“I saw her on stage and I was just like, ‘This girl is so good!’ She was just amazing.”
So when it came time for Brown, 21, to direct a play for her senior project at Kentucky’s Georgetown College, she knew she wanted Higgins, 22, to be in it.
The play was “Blackademics,” a 2018 piece by Black playwright Idris Goodwin. In it, two Black women, both college professors, visit a new, exclusive restaurant to celebrate one of the women getting tenure. The celebration turns strange, however, when the restaurant’s server makes the women fight to “earn” a table, a chair or a glass of water.
“You don’t get to see who wins the battle, but it’s assumed that it’s most likely they’re not going to win, because they’re up against this person who is kind of representative of the white mind,” said Higgins, who is Black.
“I wanted to produce a play that would make white audiences uncomfortable,” said Brown, also Black. “Because when we’re uncomfortable is when we grow.”
The play was scheduled for April 17-19. But by the time Brown and Higgins went home for spring break in March, they knew that their show, like so much in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, would be cancelled.
Looking back at a tumultuous and often painful year, the two found parallels between the loss of their play and the loss of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, among others.
Red State…
Higgins grew up in Redfox, an unincorporated community in eastern Kentucky’s rural Knott County. The only Black people Higgins knew were family. As much as Higgins felt connected to mountain life, she said, there were unspoken rules that only applied to her family. “There was just this understanding that you don’t go to these certain places, you don’t hang around these certain people even if they’re nice to you, and you don’t go past certain times in certain areas.”
It wasn’t until she went to college that Higgins realized how her experiences in rural eastern Kentucky were different from those of her Black peers from other parts of the state: Things that outraged other Black students were normal to her.
Illustration by Mindy Fulner, LPM
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Ohio Valley ReSource
An occasional series exploring Black life in the Ohio Valley’s small towns.
Being in the cast of “Blackademics” was particularly special to her. “I was very appreciative to be in a space that was just Black people for a Black production,” she said. “I had never had that before. You do get to bring the culture, you don’t have to worry about, ‘If I say so-and-so, people are going to label me as this kind of Black girl.”
When Georgetown College closed, Higgins weathered the pandemic in her home in Redfox.
She remembered the day her little sister came into the house, brandishing a cell phone. “She said, ‘Did you see this?’ She said, ‘I’m not going to show you the video, but have you seen it?’ And she told me what had happened.”
Hundreds of miles away, a police officer had held his knee on George Floyd’s neck as Floyd lay face-down in the street, begging for help, and then dying.
Higgins and her sister shared their anger and their fear. “I just remember thinking, I can’t cry in front of her, because she sees me as the calm one.”
Higgins thought back to a conversation she’d had with Brown during a rehearsal back at school. “These two characters come together in the end, even though we see them argue a lot during the play. And [Brown] said the words ‘my sister’s keeper.’ And that was just playing through my head. Because you get so scared. I get so scared being reminded, even though you already know, that it’s dangerous out in the world for you and anyone that looks like you.”
… Blue Island
In Lexington, Brown’s experience was different. “Lexington and Louisville are like blue islands in this red state,” she said. “So living in my city, I have realized things and went through things, but I feel like my city’s on the right track. I just wish that the rest of Kentucky would hop on board with Lexington and Louisville and just do better on some of these issues, especially minority issues.”
Isolated from college friends and community, Brown, too, reflected on her experience in light of the Black Lives Matter movement surging in the Ohio Valley.
“Essentially what you feel at the end [of the play] is this recurring theme in America, the destruction of Black bodies, Black people always on the bottom, Black people always losing. And doing this play and not even getting to wrap up and tell this story, and then going home and feeling isolated and hearing stories of Black people dying, the destruction of black bodies over and over again in the news… it’s just like, these stories need to be told.
“It’s so sad that we didn’t get to do the play, but now with all the things that happened over the summer, I think we’re starting to see stories be told again.”
For Brown and Higgins, “Blackademics” didn’t end neatly. There was no happy ending: Just a deeper awareness of systems of oppression. 2020, they said, felt the very same.
2020 presented new levels of outrage over police killings of Black and Brown people in this nation. Police killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor which prompted protests, marches and rallies to denounce racially motivated police brutality.
A Black Lives Matter march in Kingwood, West Virginia set up a flash point for that tiny town. Black protestors and their allies faced off with white people who say Kingwood has no race problem. The angry white crowd outnumbered BLM marchers and showed the raw seam of rage that has come to define racism in this country.
In this Us & Them episode, host Trey Kay speaks with West Virginia Delegate Danielle Walker, a woman pushing back at the fear and outrage of racial hatred in America.
For this episode, Us & Them collaborated with Chris Jones and Jesse Wright of 100 Days in Appalachia, a non-profit news outlet at West Virginia University.
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This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond. You also can listen to Us & Them on WVPB Radio — tune in on the fourth Thursday of every month at 8 p.m., with an encore presentation on the following Saturday at 3 p.m.
Chris Jones
/
100 Days In Appalachia
Kingwood BLM March organizer Frank Goines walks with West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker. Walker wears body armor under her shirt.
Chris Jones
/
100 Days In Appalachia
BLM marcher at the Kingwood Rally passes a counter protester wearing a Nazi SS shirt with a swastika tattooed on his hand. Other counter protesters shouted insults and racial slurs at BLM marchers.
Chris Jones
/
100 Days In Appalachia
As BLM marchers made their way through the streets of Kingwood, they passed armed counter protestors shouting racial epithets .
Chris Jones
/
100 Days In Appalachia
West Virginia Del. Danielle Walker marches with a BLM activist on one arm and a counter protester on the other in an attempt to deescalate tension during a Black Lives Matter march in Kingwood, West Virginia in September 2020.
In a virtual press briefing Friday, Gov. Jim Justice addressed a letter sent to him by West Virginia House of Delegates member Danielle Walker, a Democrat from Monongalia County.
The letter called on Justice to address a rise in white supremacy and messages of hate across West Virginia.
Justice said he had received Walker’s letter and ordered the state police and the West Virginia Human Rights Commission to reach out to Walker and look into the issue.
“We don’t need to tolerate at any level, any level of hate and hatred and hate speech … anywhere at any time,” Justice said.
Walker’s letter recalled participating in a Black Lives Matter event in Kingwood on Sept. 12. What was promoted as a peaceful event, reportedly turned hostile when those protesting racial injustice were met by counter protesters.
Walker said another event in Morgantown the following day was also met with several of the same counter protesters.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement Friday, condemning the messages of hate Walker received. The group is the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.
Del. Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, is calling on Gov. Jim Justice to address a rise in white supremacy and messages of hate across West Virginia. A letter from Walker addressed to the governor cites her personal experiences participating in protests of racial injustice, recent comments from state lawmakers and inaction from Justice himself.
In the letter to Justice dated Wednesday, Sept. 23, Walker recalled participating in an event in support of Black Lives Matter. What was promoted as a peaceful event in Kingwood on Sept. 12 reportedly turned hostile when those protesting racial injustice were met by counter protesters. Walker said another event in Morgantown the following day was also met with several of the same counter protesters.
Walker detailed her experience at those events in the letter to the governor. She said she is still recovering from trauma she experienced in Kingwood, where she said she was called racial slurs and threatened by white supremacists and neo-Nazis as she marched with others protesting racial injustice.
“Kingwood could have been the place I took my last breath. An angry mob of [w]hite supremacists approached us and pushed many peaceful protestors off the sidewalk. I have been called a N***** before, but never in that tone of voice and with eyes full of rage, looking at me as if I wasn’t American enough,” Walker wrote. “We were called apes. We were told to go back to Africa and that we didn’t belong there. It was an intense walk of a few blocks to get to the courthouse past a crowd of counter protesters screaming ‘All Lives Matter!’ and ‘White Power!’”
As a Black woman, Walker is one of only four people of color in the 100-member West Virginia House of Delegates.
“When many of us support and say Black Lives Matter, no one has ever stated ONLY Black Lives Matter. But Black Lives are becoming an endangered species,” she wrote.
Black Lives Matter is both an organized group and a decentralized movement calling for an end to racial injustice and police brutality. While those associated with Black Lives Matter are often accused of violent behavior, research published in the Journal of Political Communication suggests that perceptions of those involved is heavily influenced by a person’s political affiliation. The group is not listed as a domestic terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
Walker said that she has begun taking precautions when going into public, given the hostile reactions to her participation in the protests and threats made against her.
“I have night tremors and nightmares every night because [of] what I experienced in Kingwood,” she wrote. “Body armor is part of my wardrobe, and I travel with security, even to go to Walmart, because of the threats I receive every day.”
Walker also called out 17 Republicans in the West Virginia Senate who have not denounced attacks on peaceful protests protected under the First Amendment but have instead taken issue with stickers on WVU helmets that show support of Black lives.
She also wrote that one of those senators who signed onto a letter calling on university presidents to denounce perceived “hate speech” — Sen. Dave Sypolt, R-Preston — sat safely in his vehicle during the event in Kingwood on Sept. 12 as Walker and others were approached by counter protesters who were armed with automatic weapons.
Sen. Sypolt was not immediately reached for comment on his recollection of that day’s events.
Walker said she is disappointed that Justice and other elected officials have not condemned displays of white supremacy such as what she has experienced in recent weeks.
She asked for no direct response to her letter, but did call on Justice to address the matter Friday during one of his regularly scheduled briefings on the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I need you to see me, protect me, and govern me with unity and solidarity,” Walker wrote to Justice. “Hate is not making America Great. This Mountaineer does NOT feel FREE.”
A spokesman for Justice’s spokesman declined to offer comment on the letter Wednesday afternoon, noting in an email that “this is actually the first I am hearing about it.”
