Diverse Supporters Demonstrate for “Black Lives Matter”

On Tuesday, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Lubbock held a demonstration in support of Black Lives Matter. It was located at the Timothy Cole Memorial, which is named after a former African-American student at Texas Tech who died in prison after being wrongly convicted of rape.

Sarah Jones, a senior art history major from Keller, Texas, is a member of the church and helped at the event by passing out signs to protesters. Although the weather ranged from a drizzle to a steady downpour, she was pleased with how many people showed up to participate.

“I just thought it was important to say especially that Black Lives Matter because racial discrimination is still very prevalent in society, which a lot of people try to say is not true,” Jones said.

She said that although she was pleased with the support, their Facebook page had received some “certainly ugly and not welcome” words that have since been deleted. Many people honked their car horns as they drove by, some held up their middle fingers and some yelled that “all lives matter.”

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Vonzie Hooper, a 1995 Texas Tech graduate, was not holding a sign, but said he feels strongly about the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I’ve often thought that the individuals guilty of killing the cops in Dallas, and also Baton Rouge, were of course criminals after they did that,” Hooper said. “But also, I thought that in war, innocent people do get killed. And the reason they did that, I thought, was because of all of the innocent black lives that policemen have taken in the past ten years or so. And this is retaliation on their part.”

The “Black Lives Matter/Standing on the Side of Love Lubbock” Facebook page posted that it had a great group and thanked the Lubbock Police Department for its support.

“Hopefully this is the beginning of a lot of conversations, and real change,” the Facebook post read.

About Maddy McCarty

Maddy is the Graduate Executive Director for The Hub@TTU. She loves reading, writing and petting her cats. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism, is pursuing her master's in mass communications and wants to continue reporting on important issues.