ATLANTA—These were the chants of Atlanta University Center (AUC) students as they marched through the school campus on Thursday night. It was also the findings of the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s autopsy of Nolan Wells that the family released on September 26. Wells was an 18-year-old Black Mississippi teenager who went missing and was later found dead on a boating trip on July 4. Investigators initially ruled Wells’ death a drowning. However, due to a combination of the autopsy, Wells’ parents’ skepticism of the local police, and the lengthy history of Black lynching in Mississippi, concerned Americans around the country have demanded a deeper look into Wells’ death.
The rally, organized by the Spelman College NAACP chapter, came together following the release of Mississippi’s autopsy of Wells. According to the report, Wells had no water in his airways at the time of his death. The coroner also found evidence of injury to the back of Wells’ head in the form of two contusions. That release came only three days after a grand jury determined that there were no criminal charges to bring forward.
A’nija Hughley, president of the Spelman College NAACP chapter and third-year student, helped to organize the rally. The march was initially planned after the autopsy was released, although it wasn’t the first rally the chapter had organized. Previously, in January, the group organized a march to the Georgia State Capitol to protest the Trump Administration.
The march started outside the Robert W. Woodruff Library on the college campus. Following a prayer, the crowd of students marched their way through the campus of the Historically Black Universities. Those not attending the rally cheered from their apartment balconies, or joined the stream of chanters and protestors.
The chapter’s goal of the rally was to return “to the Atlanta Student Movement ideas of protest and civil disobedience,” Hughley reported to the People’s World. Just 65 years earlier, AUC students formed the movement to protest segregation not only in the City of Atlanta, but across the entire South.
“What we really want from this march is to make students in the AUC aware about the situation,” Hughley commented. On top of that, the students wanted to send a message to the AUC administration that they “are not going to be silent or apathetic to situations like this, and that we actually care about what’s going on, and we want to do something to fight back against it.”
Hughley was not the only one who planned to raise her voice on the campus. Thousands of students carrying signs reading “Black Boys Deserve to Grow Old” and “He Did Not Drown” marched in unison across campus.
Another Spelman student and NAACP member, Myana Garrison, called out Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch during the protest. “Treat this case as you would treat it if it was a white boy.” Garrison spoke of the student’s collective outrage and anger over the teenager’s death, emphasizing they “should not have to ask and beg for justice” not only for Wells, but every victim of racist violence in Mississippi. According to Tuskegee University, 539 Black people were lynched in Mississippi from the years 1882-1968.
The rally lasted a few hours, but the organizers pleaded to the student body that the night of protest couldn’t be their only and last action for Wells. The activists behind the bullhorns acknowledged and condoned the crowd’s anger and frustration, but told them their anger “should be driving them to register to vote.” The rally attendees agreed, and chanted back at the speakers: “Vote for Nolan Wells!”
First, for the students and those invested in the case, there is the symbolic importance of voting in this election cycle. As Hughley pointed out to People’s World, “this would’ve been the first election [Wells] was able to vote in, and he is not able to.” Essentially, AUC students recognize they can vote in honor of a Black teenager who never had the opportunity to exercise his constitutional right.
Continuing on the importance of voting, Hughley remarked that “the people who handled his case are elected officials.” When students go out and vote for positions such as attorney general, they can ensure “cases like this have a better outcome,” Hughley clarified.
Rally speakers reminded the protestors they have until October 5 to register to vote, and can begin early voting on October 13.
The rally concluded at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. The civil rights leader graduated on the very same campus from Morehouse University. During a 1959 Morehouse commencement speech, Dr. King asked the graduating students: “Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?” about the racial terror that gripped the South. In his spirit of persistence and dedication, he declared the answer to be negative.
That was sixty-seven years ago. On Thursday evening, students again answered his question. As the signs, the chanting, and the speeches proved, AUC students are not standing by and are more concerned than ever for Nolan Wells.
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