A crowd of about 50 black students walked down Seventh Street on Wednesday afternoon in two silent, straight lines.
The BlackIUnity march took students from the Sample Gates to the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center where they then stood outside and listened to students speak about the importance of empowerment among the black community.
“With this new president-elect that we have, we can’t afford to not have community,” graduate student Angelica Smith said to the crowd.
Smith focused her speech around the four words she said she likes to live by: unity, education, compassion and community.
“Unity is not just something that we put on a shirt. It’s a lifestyle,” Smith said. “When I see you walking down the street, I don’t care if I’ve never seen you before ever in life. You share the same melanin with me, I’m going to smile at you regardless.”
Education about the black community in regular education is limited to the basics of slavery, Barack Obama’s presidency and Martin Luther King Jr. This can make it hard to help others understand the history of minority discrimination in the country.
“They don’t feel like that exists in America, and I’m just here to tell you that’s not true,” Smith said.
Last year, the event took place on a Saturday, but the group thought a weekday would allow more students to see the march as they were walking to class, Smith said.
Although class times and other priorities potentially prevented other students from participating in the march, Smith said those who walked should not be angry at those who weren’t there.
She said talking with them about where their priorities lie could be more beneficial than just blaming them for not attending.
“It’s not your position to tell them, ‘You’re not black enough,’ or, ‘You’re not woman enough,’ because that’s not education,” Smith said. “It’s your job to spread the information they clearly don’t have.”
In addition, students must also remember they don’t know everything, even if they think they do, Smith said. Listening to others with different upbringings, lifestyles and opinions can help more people understand each other.
For Smith, if black students do not come together, they are ignoring the struggles of their African-born ancestors who formed a community in order to survive their enslavement.
“In this society, we were never meant to get this far,” Smith said. “They brought us over here as human cattle, and that was where our relevance in America was going to end.”
Another student, ChareA Smith, said even issues affecting other minorities, like the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters fighting in Standing Rock, North Dakota , can come back to the issues black citizens face. Just like the Native Americans fighting against the pipeline, the people of Flint, Michigan are afraid for their water after months without relief .
She emphasized that the crowd needs to remain aware of everything happening around them and not become too fixed on their own lives.
“It’s very important to be aware of everything that’s going on,” Smith said. “You can’t wait until something affects you personally, or your friend personally, or someone in your family before you become aware of a situation and want to make a change.”
Sophomore Charnita Johnson said she came to the march with the hopes of starting to become more involved in the black community. As Groups Scholar, Johnson has other minority connections, but the BlackIUnity march is the first activism event she has joined.
“I want to be able to say I did something in college with my community and not just stood away and didn’t get involved,” Johnson said.
When the students reached the clock tower, they took photos of the smiling group before raising their fists into the air as a show of empowerment.
“Black lives matter!” one student yelled out to her fellow marchers before the camera clicked.
An earlier version of this story misstated the word chattle as cattle. The IDS regrets this error.
