ON THE NIGHT OF APRIL 20, 1985—nearly three decades before repeated police killings of Black people lit the fuse of the Black Lives Matter movement—31-year-old Lloyd “Tony” Stevenson helped two employees at a 7-Eleven in Portland, Oregon, foil a robbery, then got into a fight with a witness in the parking lot.
Police arrived, and a white officer placed Stevenson, a Black father of five and former Marine, in a choke hold, the same type of restraint that police would use in the killing of Eric Garner in New York City in 2014. Stevenson collapsed, and he died 45 minutes later in a Portland hospital. Portland’s Black community was furious and took to the streets. An inquest jury ruled the case a negligent homicide, but a grand jury later declined to indict the officer.
Jamal Harvey was Stevenson’s younger brother. “That changed things a lot for me as a kid,” he says, “because from 12 years (old) on, whether it was right or wrong, I didn’t feel I could trust the police at all.”
Harvey, 47, moved to Charlotte in 2007 and began to volunteer for community organizations like the Girl Scouts and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Carolinas chapter; he’s also a bill payments supervisor for AvidXchange. After a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in 2016, he and some of his nonprofit contacts founded Queen City Unity, a community organization that offers diversity and financial education to young people and helps organize food and clothing drives for the poor and homeless. The group is driven by the idea, which Harvey emphasizes as board chairman, “that we can unite our community through acts of kindness.”
Bu hikaye Charlotte Magazine dergisinin December 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Charlotte Magazine dergisinin December 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without
