By Tim Schrag ’12 / Photos by Doug Barrett, 400 North Creative
JahVelle Rhone ’10 gets tense anytime he’s pulled over by police. Even if he’s done nothing wrong.
As a Black man, that is his reality.
As an undergraduate at K-State, he excelled in the classroom. He was even the first Black undergraduate instructor in the Department of English, teaching civil rights literature. Despite this, he still faced racism, discrimination, being called racial slurs and even police profiling.
Rhone, now chair of K-State’s Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab and a pastor at a Manhattan area church, said racism is present in the community, but it is incumbent on everyone to fix it.
After the killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, Rhone felt extreme sadness, trauma and grief. He couldn’t sleep.
As a pastor, he knew he needed to speak out for justice for Floyd, Arbery and the many other people of color who have died unnecessarily due to police brutality and systematic racism. So he organized a protest, something he’d never done before. He said it was an opportunity to speak out and to preach the Gospel of Jesus.
“God tells us to speak up for the least of them,” he said. “People need to hear the authentic concern and the humanity in what I’m saying. Then people can understand or at least empathize.”
So he got to work.
With the help of Trumanue Lindsey Jr., K-State’s director of diversity and multicultural student life, other area pastors and community leaders, and members of K-State’s Black Student Union, he forged a plan, an itinerary and started to spread the word. Over the course of 16 short hours, he had turned a Facebook post saying the community needed to protest against injustice into an actual event in Aggieville’s Triangle Park next to K-State’s campus on May 30, 2020.
Prior to the protest Rhone and Lindsey spoke with Riley County Police Department Director Dennis Butler to discuss the protest and make arrangements. They worked as a team to ensure safety factoring in the concerns for COVID-19, while still practicing their right to peaceably assemble.
In the process of setting this protest up Rhone had many thoughts. He was concerned about his safety, his children’s safety, the attendees’ safety. He was worried about the spread of COVID-19. He and Lindsey arrived at the park two hours early to pray that God would keep everyone safe. He thought about what the turnout might be. He figured maybe 50 people would show up. The protest yielded more than 200 participants.
Another protest organized independently of Rhone’s was in the works. The organizers asked him to speak during the second protest and pray. There were more than 2,000 people in attendance.
The experience and the turnout at both protests were eyeopening for Rhone. Most of the attendees were white. Most of them were ready to listen and wanted to know how to help.
“That was the moment where I said God is definitely in this thing,” he said.
He said these people are now his allies and he will continue to ask them to stand up against injustice and racism.
“Everyone has a job to do whether it's the person who organized the protest or just someone who comes to pray,” he said. “Everyone has a part to play. Two thousand people don’t just show up because of one person. This shows that people’s hearts are changing and they were compelled to do so.”
Note: This article originally appeared in the fall 2020 issue of K-Stater magazine.