‘The times, they are a-changin’.’ Even Central Valley’s small towns see George Floyd protests
In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests and other Black Lives Matter demonstrations have sprung up in the smallest central San Joaquin Valley towns with tiny Black populations in a way that historians and civil rights leaders say is unprecedented for the region.
The demonstrations are led mostly by young people who organize using social media and want to raise their voices to show their Black community members they’re supported.
Plus, the protests are driven by a history of persistent racial bias in law enforcement and police misconduct in the San Joaquin Valley. On top of that, the global coronavirus pandemic rocked the region, hitting vulnerable populations the hardest and shattering the local economy.
While Fresno’s biggest protest attracted nearly 3,500 people and other demonstrations in Visalia and Bakersfield made headlines when drivers hit protesters with vehicles, hundreds if not thousands of people raised their voices in smaller Valley towns such as Corcoran, Hanford, Tulare, Reedley, Kingsburg, Clovis, Chowchilla and Los Banos. Additional demonstrations are planned this coming weekend in Ivanhoe and Selma.
“I feel like finally, there is some type of change,” said Maya Stewart, a 22-year-old college student who grew up in Reedley and spoke at a vigil there. “I am really proud of this town right now.”
Demonstrations in former sundown towns
Growing up in Reedley, Stewart said she could count the number of Black residents, and many included her family.
“It’s not uncommon for somebody here in this town not to really have seen a lot of Black people in their life,” she said.
Plus, the small number of Black residents, including students attending Reedley College, don’t always feel connected or accepted in town.
Nestled at the base of the Sierra Nevada southeast of Fresno, the agricultural town of about 25,000 has a Black population of just 1.5 percent, U.S. Census data shows. Of nearly 1 million residents, Fresno County’s Black population is just under 6 percent. Most live in the city of Fresno, where 7.6 percent of the population is Black and neighborhoods remain highly segregated.
Many of the small towns where there have been George Floyd or Black Lives Matter demonstrations previously were sundown towns, including Chowchilla, Clovis, Kingsburg and Reedley. In sundown towns, people of color were only allowed in city limits during the day due to exclusive covenants and “sundown” policies.
After the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, many Valley towns that previously were exclusively white had no choice but to diversify, said Dr. Michael Eissinger, a history and anthropology professor at Fresno State and Fresno City College. Eventually, that led to a shift in social attitudes, he said.
“We’re at a moment where this is possible. I don’t think we were even 10 years ago,” he said. “We’re becoming more cosmopolitan as our population becomes more diverse, and that’s true everywhere, including small towns.
“It’s hard to maintain your bigotry when it’s your next-door neighbor or the girl your son is going out with,” he said.
Dolores Huerta, founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and cofounder of the United Farm Workers, said most protests in the Valley that she remembers centered around immigration. She’s participated in protests around the country since the 1960s.
But these protests are different, she said.
“It’s absolutely unprecedented,” Huerta said. “…Consider the makeup of the people who are marching. When people were marching for immigration reform, it was mostly the Latino community. But here you see that you have people of all ethnic groups banding together.”
Stephanie Gardea organized a small but vocal protest in Old Town Clovis hoping to shake the stereotype of the town.
“Clovis does have a bit of a negative stigma when it comes to racism,” she said. “But I’m a firm believer that not everybody in Clovis is a racist.”
Gardea, who is Mexican, said she wanted to show that Latinos are united with Black people. When the time comes, she knows Black allies will help Latinos fight Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and for immigration reform, she said.
“We’re going to fight this together,” she said. “We’re in it for the long haul.”
While a group of about 25 people marched down Clovis Avenue chanting and holding signs, they encountered many middle fingers, and someone even threw an iced coffee at them, Gardea said.
In total, there were at least six small protests in Clovis that consisted largely of people standing on street corners with signs, said Ty Wood, a police service officer for Clovis Police Department.
Police misconduct in the Valley
The police killing of George Floyd and the message of the Black Lives Matter movement resonates here because the region has seen its fair share of police brutality and misconduct, Huerta said, pointing to reports showing law enforcement departments in Kern County are the deadliest in the country.
Huerta listed a number of personal incidents where police ignored reports of property crimes or her foundation staffers were treated unfairly by police.
“I think the Central Valley, unfortunately, has been a target of police misconduct and police violence,” she said. “The police cannot be judge, jury and executioner. They should not be given that authority.”
In Fresno, the protests created space to revisit past police killings here, including the shootings of Isiah Murrietta-Golding and Freddy Centeno.
On Monday, signs with names and portraits of people killed by Fresno police were staked across the lawn in front of Fresno City Hall, where inside the Fresno City Council for hours debated police funding and heard from nearly 100 residents calling to defund the police.
Even if some of the smaller towns, such as Kingsburg, don’t see many instances of police brutality, “I still feel like the people around us should care about these issues, regardless, and people should be educated on what’s going on,” said Abigail Sanchez, who helped organize the unity rally in Kingsburg.
Young people raising their voices
Eissinger said the protests in small towns are possible now in part because of technological advances in transportation and social media.
“Social media has connected people in small places to people in other places, and their voices get magnified and they realize…we can have a march, and we’re not alone,” he said.
“The times, they are a-changin’,” he said.
For example, young people in Kingsburg organized their rally through a group text message that continued to grow. In Hanford, Vontrey “Trey” Gamble put out a call to action on Facebook Live.
“I was like, ‘Man, where’s Hanford at?’” Gamble said.
Kingsburg’s unity rally was organized after young people posted Black Lives Matters signs in parks that were taken down by city employees because they didn’t comply with city sign rules.
“We have never had students who are willing to speak out on social issues because the conservative view that is within Kingsburg kind of puts us at a disadvantage,” said Sanchez, 19, who graduated from Kingsburg High School and now attends UC San Diego.
“In reality, we discovered that there’s a lot of people in our community that are willing to support our viewpoints on these issues,” Sanchez said. “To have the actual Kingsburg community encourage us and support us and support what we’re doing is just kind of a relief, to know that there are people who do stand with us and want to see a new generation full of kids that are willing to speak out on things like these.”
Sirina Resendez, another Kingsburg organizer, said the rally was a way for the town to confront its own issues.
“Unfortunately in Kingsburg there is racism,” she said. “And we don’t like to talk about it.”
Organizers of the protest in Hanford were concerned they didn’t see their elected officials speaking up on the issue.
“None of our community leaders were saying anything, and I was getting frustrated,” Ashley Neely said.
Some of the most powerful moments from Hanford’s demonstration came during an open mic session, Gamble and Neely said.
One 13-year-old girl shared her story of telling her younger brother what to do if he encountered police. Another girl talked about her experience as a biracial teenager and having curly hair. Others shared success stories about getting into prestigious colleges such as Harvard.
“The people who went up there and spoke, they’ve been wanting to say that stuff for a long time and never had the chance to,” Gamble said.
While the events were organized by young people, most did garner the support of community leaders, including police chiefs, mayors and city councilmembers.
“I think it’s important that everyone be able to express themselves and exercise their First Amendment right,” Kingsburg Police Chief Neil Dadian said. “It’s important that society understand that even if it’s something you don’t agree with, you have to respect those who want to express their opinions.”
Maya Stewart from Reedley said she saw the vigil there as an opportunity to educate her community on the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We are not saying only Black lives matter, but that Black lives matter, too,” she said. “I’ve heard so many comments now like, ‘Why are you the only people who matter?’ or things like that, and that’s not what we’re trying to say.
“I feel like it’s such a small thing to say that we matter, too. …Right now, we just want to be able to matter. We aren’t asking to be greater than.”