“I wanted to be a beekeeper because it was a challenge, but it was also about representation. Growing up, I never saw a black beekeeper, and because I never saw anyone that looked like me doing it, I couldn’t place myself there doing it either. I wanted to challenge that but I also wanted to give my kids an opportunity to see what I didn’t see. ”

— Samantha Foxx, owner of Mother’s Finest Urban Farm

“When you look at me, I want you to see me as a black woman. I want you to look at me and see me for who I am. See us for who we are, you know, all of the things that we've had to sacrifice and go through to be here, you know, just acknowledge us for us..”

— Samantha Foxx, owner of Mother’s Finest Urban Farm”

“We had been protesting in other cities, in Minneapolis, in LA .. it was about racial issues other places. But as soon as the report came out about Mr. Neville’s death in our detention center, I was like.. absolutely not, not in my town, not in Winston-Salem. The first day of Occupy Winston was on a Wednesday. I don’t think they intended for it to be a 49 day occupation. The issues were something I wanted to get behind. Something that needed to be done. So I went and didn’t stop going until the last day. ”

— Nia Sandler, Dancer and Activist

“Our first demand was to ban the hog-tie, which was how Mr. Neville was killed in out detention center. We negotiated to ban the hog-tie and our other demand was to suspend the officers that are involved if this ever happens again.”

— Nia Sandler, Dancer and Activist.

“When protesters took 52, I’m out there and I’m hearing it-it was the same day I marched with them, the question to me was , what are we going to do? -We’re going to let them have it.- While there was a little flack I took from that, it wasn’t until they blocked I-40 several days later that I got the hateful emails. Yea, you were inconvenienced for 45 minutes but people took to I-40 because of pain and inconveniences they’ve had for over 400 years.”

— Catrina Thompson, Winston-Salem Police Chief

“So you begin your story with yourself. That’s what we do with the children. It’s important because we as a group of people have suffered from our identity being absolutely destroyed. We are still having repercussions of the tragic epic of slavery”

— Amatullah Saleem. founder of Happy Hill Neighborhood Association

“We went out in the streets, we protested, we had meetings, we talked about what the future was going to be and some improvement did take place. But now we find ourselves right back in the same position. Our children are out in the street asking for justice. We thought we had justice”

— Amatullah Saleem. founder of Happy Hill Neighborhood Association

“There’s a lot of things that have been going on since this country’s inception, Covid19 has pulled back the layers and has said- hey- your country, your community are not where you thought they were.

It’s allowed us to see health care disparities, it’s allowed us to see the wealth gaps, it’s allowed us to see the gaps in education.”

— Kenya Thornton. founder of Eliza's Helping Hands, Inc- Mediation and Victim Services

“As a Black person, we feel that we are at war everyday. It’s almost like we are in our own domestic violence with this country. If you fit everything on the power and control wheel- from economic abuse, manipulation, lying, denying, blaming, it’s like we are on our own power and control wheel. And then there’s black people.”

— Kenya Thornton. founder of Eliza's Helping Hands, Inc- Mediation and Victim Services

“You could go anywhere, you could run up and down the street and Miss Dora would be sitting on the porch ready to tell anything that went wrong, anything that any kid did wrong. The starched doilies on her table, and this was basically a shot gun apartment house. She had it so decorated, it was not like any other houses in the neighborhood, so it was an honor to go to Miss Isadora’s house. It was sorta like Nikki Giovanni’s poem “didn’t know I was in the ghetto”- It was a wonderful, wonderful community.

— Cheryl Henry, founder of Winston-Salem’s Juneteenth celebrations.

“I look back and I know now there was this systemic racism. The apartments that were built here in the 50’s, people stacked on top of each other and even though it was better than what they had, it wasn’t really planned.. people were never meant to move up because it was never in the plan.”

— Cheryl Harry, founder of Winston-Salem’s Juneteenth celebrations.