SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
PHOTOS BY HEATHER ROUSSEAU FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
TOP: Katosha Poindexter, 33, left, Bridgette Craighead, 29, and Malala Penn, 23, hold up signs
during a protest they organized in Hardy, Va., o n June 22. ABOVE: Boones Mill Produce Co., on
the main highway in Franklin County, features Trump banners along with Confederate flags.Mom, we’ve got you. We’ll take it
from here.I
t was a lazy Saturday, sunny
and protest-free, and Craig-
head waded farther into the
lake. She called to her 4-year-old
son, Bronsyn, who was standing
with fists clenched on the shore.
“C’mon, baby boy,” she said.
“Don’t be scared. It’s just water.”
She reached down and let
brown water dribble from her
cupped hands, meant to entice
him. She wished for the thou-
sandth time that she could take
her son to the well-maintained
pool located in the middle of
Rocky Mount, just behind the
Sheetz, where she had begged to
go as a child. Instead, she’d
learned to swim here, in Smith
Mountain Lake, a roughly 45-min-
ute drive from home.
The town pool was for members
only, and Craighead had never
met a Black Rocky Mount resident
who was a member. Growing up,
when Craighead asked her par-
ents about it, they said a member-
ship was needed to swim there.
They skirted any discussion of
race.
A week earlier, Craighead had
decided she was done skirting.
“Let’s talk,” she wrote on Face-
book, “about the Rocky Mount
swim club that black people can’t
go to.”
The post drew dozens of com-
ments. “My momma always told
me ‘Black people aren’t allowed
there,’ ” one Black woman wrote.
“My mama and aunt [used to] tell
me the exact same thing,” wrote
another.
“We were all told that as kids
here,” offered a third. “They never
even tried to hide it.”
A couple of days later, a woman
phoned Craighead and intro-
duced herself as a board member
of Brookside Swim Club. She ex-
plained the club’s membership
fees and promised to raise the lack
of diversity at the next board meet-
ing. A few days later, the club made
a public Facebook post: “The pool
has two shares of stock for sale —
$700.00 per share.”
Jessica Slough, another board
member, said in an interview that
the club has some Black members,
but that she does not know how
many. “I don’t know how things
worked in the past,” she said, “but
it’s been equal opportunity for at
least 12 years.”
Craighead considered the call
an early hint of progress. Her
friends agreed: No real change
would come until Franklin County
hired more Black teachers, re-
formed the laws that put too many
Black bodies behind bars, andborn in Madagascar and adopted
at age 8 by Ruby Edwards Penn,
becoming part of one of the coun-
ty’s oldest Black families. The Ed-
wardses still lived on Edwards
Way, on the more than 100 acres of
land their family had owned for
generations, not far from the farm
where Ruby’s great-grandfather
was once enslaved.
Ruby Penn’s father was well
known for his catchphrase: “They
can’t ride your back unless you’re
bent.” Ruby Penn and her sisters
had helped integrate the county’s
schools. Ruby Penn’s youngest sis-
ter, Penny Edwards Blue, was now
the only Black member of the
Franklin County School Board, the
one who’d proposed banning Con-
federate gear in January.
Malala Penn grew up celebrat-
ing Juneteenth. She grew up hear-
ing her mother’s stories about in-
tegration: The girls who shot wa-
ter guns on the bus in the winter-
time so the Edwards sisters’ hair
froze when they walked home. The
teachers who called on Black stu-
dents only if they thought the chil-
dren didn’t know the answer. The
boy who once told Ruby Penn, “I’m
not going to sit next to no n-----,”
and the graffiti he later scrawled
in dust on the bus window, which
the driver left in place for weeks:
“RUBY EDWARDS, KING OF THE
N-----S.”
A few days before the June-
teenth event, Ruby Penn, 69, had
drawn her daughter aside and
asked if she could say something
honest.
“When I look at you,” Ruby Penn
said, “I see myself at your age.”
She meant it, good and bad: She
was so proud, and yet so frustrat-
ed, that Malala was fighting the
same battles she had.
Watching her daughter now,
gesturing behind the microphone
in the farmers market, Ruby Penn
tried to feel hopeful. But the ha-
tred in Franklin County ran too
deep, and she was tired. Watching
the video of George Floyd’s killing
had left Ruby Penn breathless and
sagging. The police had killed that
man like he was a bug, she
thought.
She had given up the best years
of her life to fight for justice, Ruby
Penn felt, and it hadn’t made a bit
of difference.
Malala Penn and the others had
strategized about what to tell
Ruby’s generation. Now, Malala
Penn sought to channel that mes-
sage — in the warmth of her voice,
in the flick of her wrist — as she
strode to the mic and looked at her
mother.
“My name is Malala Penn,” she
said. “I’m Black and I’m proud.”
But she was really trying to say:hours early to hang signs from the
empty green stalls — a bedsheet
reading “BLACK LIVES MATTER”
and smaller posters saying “If I
comply, will I still die?” They had
set up a booth to register voters
and another to encourage resi-
dents to complete the 2020 Cen-
sus. They had ordered 20 pizzas
from Domino’s.
Sun sparkled off an inflatable
bouncy house, and children
milled sticky-fingered in the heat,
faces half-hidden behind columns
of cotton candy. Three officers
from the Franklin County Sheriff’s
Office stood guard, summoned be-
cause of rumored plans to disrupt
the protest, including a vow that
the old boys of Franklin County
would ride again that night.
The women put the threat out
of their minds. It was 6:01 p.m.
Time to start the Juneteenth cele-
brations.
Craighead raised a plastic bot-
tle filled with brownish water, left
over from a ceremony they had
performed earlier that day. They
had waded into a nearby river,
inching around a White family on
a fishing trip, and invoked the
blessing of their African ancestors
— “seen and unseen,” Craighead
had said, “known and unknown”
— by tossing offerings of fresh
fruit into the water.
Now, Craighead unscrewed the
cap. Penn asked the crowd to
stand and call out the names of
those they wished to honor.
“Martin Luther King!” someone
said, and Craighead poured a drib-
let of the dark liquid.
“Rosa Parks!” Another pour.
“Emmett Till!” “Harriet Tubman!”
Craighead suggested that one her-
self, and bounced on her toes as
she let the water stream past her
leopard-print boots.
It was Craighead and Poindex-
ter’s first time celebrating June-
teenth. Both had suffered difficult
childhoods, and both had recently
moved back to their hometown
t o “get straight,” as Poindexter
said. But neither had a steady
j ob. Craighead, who is midway
through cosmetology school, had
found intermittent work cutting
hair, until the coronavirus out-
break wiped that out. For several
months now, the cousins had lived
off their savings, pandemic stimu-
lus checks and child support. Once
they’d saved enough, they hoped
to open a beauty salon. Both said
they hadn’t learned much about
Black history in school. But, in-
spired by the protests in the wake
of Floyd’s death, they were hungry
to know.
Penn was hungry to help. Un-
like the cousins, she was not a
native of Franklin County. She wasour Juneteenth celebration today.
Could you put this on the window
in a show of support?”
It was Penn’s first time inside
the restaurant in more than 10
years. She had inherited her dis-
dain from her grandfather, who
grew up when the Hub still forced
Black people to get their food from
a tiny takeout window around
back. Even after integration, he
refused to spend his money at the
diner, and he died seven weeks shy
of 100 without once stepping in-
side.
The takeout window, Penn
knew, was still there. Someone
had painted it shut and stuck
three propane tanks in front of it.
But it was there.
In fact, much of the county still
looked and felt the way Penn’s
grandparents remembered it.
Black people still didn’t drive far
into Endicott, a mountainous re-
gion that had once served as a
stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.
The businesses and the town
council — and the police force, and
the musicians invited to sing at the
local performance center — were
still overwhelmingly White.
And most people passing
through still had to cross through
Boones Mill, a small town an-
chored by two gas stations and a
curio shop bedecked with con-
crete statues and large Confeder-
ate flags. “Gateway to Franklin
County,” a sign there read, and it
was. The flags outside Boones Mill
Produce Co. were just about the
first thing any visitors saw.
Inside the store, a man, who
said he was a longtime employee
and gave his name only as Gary,
said his great-grandfather fought
for the Confederacy. Black people
almost never came to the store,
Gary told a reporter. But White
tourists occasionally walked in
shouting that he should remove
the flags.
Sometimes, Gary shouted back,
he said. “We’re not racist,” he re-
called yelling to one man, aiming
to rile him. “We just don’t like
n------, sp--- and Jews.”
Penn sped up when she crossed
through that intersection, which
happened every time she drove
between home and Mary Baldwin
University in Staunton, where she
was just finishing her senior year.
She hated the flags. She hated the
intersection. She never stopped
unless she was about to run out of
gas.
Part of her hated being inside
the Hub, too. She could feel the
stares. Yet she also felt powerful in
the knowledge that she was mak-
ing all these old White people un-
comfortable.
The waitress took Penn’s sign.
When the owners showed up later
in the afternoon, the woman said,
she would explain Penn’s request
and let them decide.
Later that day, Penn drove by to
check. The windows were bare.
She marched inside and ap-
proached the manager.
“We don’t put any fliers for any-
body up,” he told her. “The only
thing we have on our windows is
what we have to have for covid.”
“That’s been the regulations for... ?” Penn asked.
“For everybody,” he said, misun-
derstanding her question. “But if
it weren’t for that, we would do it.”
She raised an eyebrow, thanked
him and walked out.
T
hat evening, Penn, Craig-
head and Poindexter
stepped one by one to micro-
phones and faced a crowd of about
two dozen people, Black and
White, who’d gathered inside the
open-air plaza that normally hosts
Rocky Mount’s Sunday farmers
market.
The women had arrived twopassed a stimulus package creat-
ing Black jobs and boosting Black-
owned businesses. On the advice
of Penny Edwards Blue, who is
mentoring the trio, they planned
to split their chapter of Black Lives
Matter into three committees: ed-
ucation, law and the economy.
But conversations were a start.
And more kept happening.
Not long after the protest out-
side the courthouse, the Franklin
County School Board reversed it-
self, agreeing to ban the Confeder-
ate flag from schools. Two weeks
after that, a local pastor invited
White and Black residents to two
town-hall meetings on race rela-
tions in Franklin County, the first
anyone could remember.
At the lake, Bronsyn decided to
risk it and splashed into the water.
Craighead raised her arms in wel-
come. Then she spotted a drifting
cigarette, left by another family
out for a swim.T
hey decided to hold their
fourth protest outside the
Wendy’s restaurant where
Craighead’s mom used to work.
It was the perfect location, on a
heavily trafficked road that led to
Westlake Corner, a town just a
little north of Rocky Mount. In the
1940s and 1950s, the area had
served as a hub for the Ku Klux
Klan, Ruby Penn and her sisters
remembered; nowadays, it was
just very White. Craighead, Poin-
dexter and Malala Penn had never
demonstrated this close to West-
lake before. They didn’t think any-
one had.
Now, on a Monday afternoon in
late June, they were joined by a
dozen mostly older White people:
a smattering of congregants from
a nearby church and members of
the Smith Mountain Lake Demo-
crats. Although the majority of
Franklin County is deep red, the
lake area — with its leafy vistas
and upscale homes — tends to
attract liberal-leaning retirees
from up north.
Craighead shimmied to music
pumping from a portable speaker,
sweating a little in leopard-print
shorts, a leopard-print face mask
and a T-shirt reading “Legalize
Being Black.”
“Hey, look, it doesn’t matter if
y’all don’t know how to dance,” she
called into her megaphone. “If you
feel the music, just let it move
you!”
She, Poindexter and Penn were
thrilled to see the septuagenari-
ans, but they would have stayed
even if no one had shown up.
Actually, that was their plan for
months to come: As enthusiasm
dwindled, they guessed, their
demonstrations would reliably
draw only themselves.
Themselves and the opposition.
It happened that Monday like it
happened every time. White mid-
dle fingers protruded from pass-
ing windows. A car slowed down
so a White man could mutter
threats, and Craighead turned up
the music to avoid hearing them. A
red truck gunned its engine and
veered close to the curb, sending
elderly men and women stum-
bling.
Behind Craighead, at the Wen-
dy’s drive-through, a White cus-
tomer leaned close to the window
and urged employees to call the
cops. Another warned that the
demonstrators might be “danger-
ous.”
“Why are they protesting?” an-
other White customer asked.
“Racial equality,” replied a teen-
age Wendy’s employee.
“They already have,” the man
said, “as much as they’re going to
get.”
It was impossible to fully drown
them out with Craighead’s favor-
ite reply, “We love you!” Some-
times, the three women felt
scared. That’s when Poindexter
thought of her rental home, with
its water leaks and hole in the
ceiling. She told herself that every-
thing she was doing would help
create a fairer world for her kids,
so they wouldn’t have to raise their
families in a place like that.
Craighead thought of Bronsyn.
Penn thought of the children she
might have someday.
And they all thought: If they
didn’t speak up in Franklin Coun-
ty, who would?
Another White man in a black
truck whipped by Wendy’s now,
his middle finger outstretched. He
slowed enough to spit the words
directly into Craighead’s face: “F---
you!” Then he slammed the pedal
again, and she chased after him,
sprinting and screaming “I love
you!” until she had to stop, bent
and out of breath.
The man turned into a CVS
parking lot, swirled in a screech-
ing U-turn and came back for an-
other go. As soon as the light
changed, he was streaking for-
ward, a blur of black metal and
long white finger and loud, angry
honking.
Craighead was crumpled, pant-
ing in the grass.
She straightened. She raised
her megaphone. She started run-
ning after him.
[email protected]George Floyd’s neck was crushed
beneath the knee of a Minneapolis
police officer. Nine days since the
nation had erupted in protests
that shattered cities and swept
Americans, in what felt like every
corner of the country, into an un-
precedented reckoning with rac-
ism and police violence.
Every corner except Rocky
Mount, the seat of Franklin Coun-
ty in southern Virginia. Craighead
had grown up in this county of
about 56,000, which lies lapped in
the foothills of the Blue Ridge
Mountains and is nearly 90 per-
cent White. Rocky Mount itself is
nearly 70 percent White, and in
Craighead’s public school classes,
she was almost always the only
Black child in class.
It’s the kind of place where Con-
federate flags hang, twinned with
Trump 2020 banners, outside
homes and shops. Where local of-
ficials rebuilt and rededicated the
Confederate statue in 2010 at a
cost of more than $100,000, after a
pickup driver accidentally demol-
ished it and local historians com-
pared its demise to a death in the
family. Where earlier this year,
t he White superintendent pooh-
poohed a ban on Confederate gear
in schools, proposed by the school
board’s only Black member, by as-
serting that nobody could possibly
be bothered by “a little rebel flag
on a jacket.”
It’s the birthplace of prominent
Black educator Booker T. Wash-
ington — now marked by a nation-
al monument — and home to the
site where he was freed. But the
county’s historical marker notes
only that Confederate “General
Jubal A. Early lived in this county.”
No one expected the protests
following Floyd’s killing to reach
Franklin. Not its White people, not
its young people and certainly not
its older Black residents, who
fought to integrate the schools in
the 1960s before watching — with
horror that gave way, over de-
cades, to dull despair — as things
settled back to how they’d been,
with Black people living as sec-
ond-class citizens in fact, if no
longer in law.
But Craighead, watching the
turmoil on television, had felt a
calling. She’d phoned her cousin
Katosha Poindexter, 33, who was
scared but who slept on it and
awoke feeling called, too. They
were joined by a third Black wom-
an, Malala Penn, 23, and together
they decided: It was time for
change. And, they thought, it was a
test: If it could happen here, it
could happen anywhere.
Craighead knew she would not
command the kind of crowds she
saw in major cities on TV. No
thousands of demonstrators
hoisting signs; few, if any, cars
honking in support. She knew
there might be hate — and now it
had arrived, spitting and red-
faced in a black truck.
She turned away from the driv-
er and his jutting middle finger,
lowering her gaze to the dozens
who’d begun to mass beneath the
monument: White people, Black
people, Asian and Mexican Ameri-
cans, the young and the old, in-
cluding one man who later told
her he’d marched with the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. It was more
people than she’d ever seen at one
time in Rocky Mount — except for
the town’s Christmas parade,
which was almost always all
White.
“This is what we’re going to
have to deal with all day,” she
called to the protesters on the
lawn. Her protesters, she thought.
“All I want you to say back is, ‘We
love you,’ and they will hear you.
They will have to hear you.”
She hoped it was true.T
wo weeks later, on June 19 —
the day, 155 years earlier,
that the last enslaved Black
people in the United States
learned they were free — Malala
Penn strode up to a diner with a
sign under her arm.
The sign read “JUNETEENTH”
and “#BlackLivesMatterFC,” al-
though the county’s chapter of
Black Lives Matter technically
didn’t exist yet. Penn had applied
online a couple of days before as
Craighead and Poindexter looked
over her shoulders. They were still
waiting to hear back.
Penn was walking toward the
Hub Restaurant, a squat, green-
roofed building at a busy intersec-
tion, famous in Rocky Mount for
its “Club Hub” sandwiches and,
among Black residents, for its rac-
ist history.
She pushed open the front door.
The early-afternoon customers
turned and stared. The only other
Black face Penn could see be-
longed to the cook, who clattered
pans behind a tall counter in the
tiny kitchen. She approached a
waitress and asked to speak to the
manager.
“Not during lunch hour,” the
woman said.
“Okay.” Penn stepped closer and
raised the sign. “Well, I’m with
Black Lives Matter and we havePROTESTS FROM AIn rural Virginia, 3 protesters’ answer to hate: ‘We love you’