By: Lauren Filey
Chants requesting accountability and justice echoed across Hampton as hundreds of students and local activists marched from the historic grounds of Hampton University toward the gazebo at Fort Monroe.
Organized by Hampton student activist Gabrielle Baker in partnership with Black Lives Matter 757, the peace rally and demonstration aimed to keep national attention focused on 18-year-old Nolan Wells while demanding full investigative transparency. Carrying hand-painted signs and walking side-by-side down the shoreline, student marchers turned viral online awareness into a physical display of unity and grassroots action.
The route chosen for the march carried centuries of weight for the young demonstrators. Beginning at one of the nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the crowd traced a path ending at the Fort Monroe Gazebo, which was the geographic site where the first documented enslaved Africans arrived in English North America in 1619. By gathering there, organizers sought to deliberately bridge the modern struggle for Black youth with the historical roots of Black resilience in America.
For JaPharii Jones, lead organizer with Black Lives Matter 757, utilizing Fort Monroe as the focal point of the rally served as a reminder that contemporary youth activism stands on the shoulders of generations before it.
“We’re gonna finish this fight for our ancestors, and we’re going to make sure that the next generation don’t have to do what we’re doing right now,” said Jones.
For many student participants, tracing that historic shoreline physicalized the deep continuity between America's foundational racial injustices and today's civil rights struggles. Payton Johnson, a first-year political science major and native of Chesapeake, Virginia, described the journey from her HBCU campus to Fort Monroe as a deeply conflicting emotional experience.
“Honestly, it was very much empowering because I'm also native to the 757. Going from Hampton University, a major HBCU, to Fort Monroe was just like seeing a transformation to where we are today, to where we came from originally,” Johnson said. “But it also made me feel a little bit sad because, obviously, we came from Fort Monroe. It's where the first Africans came, but it's like we're still fighting for the same things that we were back then. So it's like I felt empowered, but I also felt like, why should we still have to be fighting to be heard and for our rights to be handled correctly?”
Being immersed in an HBCU environment also profoundly shaped how students view their personal stake in demanding justice for young Black men like Nolan Wells. Surrounded by peers every day, Johnson noted that the daily reality of walking alongside young Black men pursuing their education makes the systemic violence facing Black youth feel deeply personal.
“Seeing them reminds me of what it looks like for black men to get their education, and it makes me feel like these black boys who are dying, being murdered, deserve the same rights that the black men that I'm walking by every day deserve,” Johnson explained. “So it makes me want to fight even harder to get justice for them.”
As the march culminated in speeches overlooking the water at the Fort Monroe gazebo, that sense of generational connection turned into a moment of reflection.
“I think I was really happy about the turnout, about how many people actually stayed and listened, about how many young Black educated people sounded in their speeches,” Johnson said. “Being like on the actual grounds of where we were, it just made everything a full circle for me, and especially the water... it was so beautiful. It just made me feel like it was divine timing, and being there with our ancestors, like they were seeing and hearing us.”
