GREENFIELD — The Rev. Patty Franklin and two of her relatives were the only Black people at the H.J. Ricks Centre for the Arts on Thursday night, but that’s nothing new for the Greenfield minister.
Franklin knows she’s in the minority by far in a predominantly white area like Hancock County, but she wants to use her voice to help people here understand the importance of narrowing the racial divide being felt across the country.
A member of Evangel Church in Greenfield, Franklin was part of a panel discussion at the Ricks Centre on Thursday focused on the book, “Just Mercy,” written by Bryan Stevenson, a Black attorney from Alabama who founded the Equal Justice Initiative to challenge racial and economic injustice.
Hundreds of copies of the book were circulated throughout the county over the past two months by the League of Women Voters Hancock County, who did so to spark a communitywide discussion on race relations and criminal justice reform in the aftermath of protests over the death of George Floyd.
League members used a grant from the Indiana Humanities Council to purchase the books and publicize a community reading campaign in partnership with the Hancock County Public Library, culminating in the panel discussion after a screening of the 2019 film based on the book, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.
Roughly 50 people turned out for the movie screening at the Ricks Centre on Thursday, most of whom stayed for the one-hour panel discussion afterward The discussion featured Franklin, Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton and New Palestine High School government teacher Gina Iacobucci.
Gwen Betor, a League of Women Voters member, encouraged moviegoers to stay for the discussion.
As an 84-year-old white woman, Betor has never had to warn her grandchildren to keep their hands held high when being pulled over by the police, as Franklin has, and she’s never been racially profiled and followed around a store.
But she’s passionate about civil rights and treating all people with dignity.
“What I loved about tonight is hearing how the (panelists) are all feeling hopeful,” Betor said as the crowd trickled past her after the discussion.
“They’re all feeling hopeful we can make improvements in our country and in this community, which is what we should all want. But in order to make changes in your community, you have to be willing to have a discussion, and that’s why we’re here,” she said.
‘The fear is there’
Talking points ranged from how to keep law enforcement officers accountable to communicating how to best keep minorities safe when interacting with police.
Franklin, a mother and grandmother, said she fears more for her dark-skinned grandson than she does for her fair-skinned grandson, who is easily mistaken for being white.
“The fear is there, as in, ‘What do you do?’” she said, referencing when Black people are pulled over by police.
An uprising of racism tends to happen from time to time when big issues set it off, she said, like the murder of Floyd in Minneapolis last summer. “When it does, our antennas tend to go off, as mothers and grandmothers, as far as warning our children and grandchildren to be safe,” she said.
She encourages her dark-skinned grandson, who lives in a different city, to ride the bus to work rather than walking eight blocks.
“He’s not 5 years old out walking alone; he’s a grown man. But yet the fear is there,” she said.
Franklin wishes the country would come up with a set of consistent rules for the safest thing for people to do when being pulled over, since a number of unarmed people of color have been shot and killed by police.
“Our nation has not got any rules for what do we do when police stop a Black man. Do you put your hands out the window, hold them up or lay on the dashboard? If you raise your hands up, the light might reflect off your phone or jewelry and they might think you have a gun,” Franklin said.
“This is a crazy time, and law enforcement needs to have a set of rules that are the same in every state.”
A thousand civilians are shot and killed by law enforcement every year in the U.S., said the discussion moderator, Erin Kelly, program director of The Polis Center at IUPUI.
When asked how to make law enforcement accountable, Eaton, the county prosecutor, said that technology like body cameras go a long way.
Both Greenfield police and Hancock County sheriff’s departments have acquired such cameras, “and the investment is well worth it,” he said.
“When there’s a situation we have to review, we don’t have to guess, we can look and see what happened. I think that transparency helps everyone. It certainly helps when there are questions about what happened… and it makes our job a lot more effective,” Eaton said.
“As far as the justice system in our community, we want people to have confidence that we’re going to do everything we can to get things right.”
While admitting there was still work to be done, Eaton praised the law enforcement agencies for investing in not only body cameras but in Critical Incident training, which teaches officers de-escalation skills.
Franklin questioned why, when exchanges escalate, police officers shoot a suspect in the torso or head, rather than the legs.
Eaton said that’s not how officers are trained. “They’re not trained to shoot at their legs… they’re trained to shoot for center mass,” or the torso area, he said.
“The only reason that they would unholster and discharge their weapon is because they would see what they perceive to be a threat. They’re trained to shoot for center mass. They don’t want to miss and hit something else or someone else.”
Eye-opening read
Iacobucci, who has had her New Palestine High School students read and discuss “Just Mercy” over the past few weeks, said the story of criminal injustice among minorities was eye-opening for her and her students.
While some of them said they felt hopeless about the state of the criminal justice system after reading the book, others, like herself, felt motivated to impact change.
“Reading the book, I got so much more aware of some of the issues,” said the teacher, who thinks educating both students and adults can be a powerful tool in reforming the criminal justice system and bridging the racial divide.
“Many of my students are 18, and the book is teaching about things they can lobby for when it comes time to vote,” she said.
Kelly, the moderator, said the very purpose of the community read and panel discussion was to prompt a conversation to serve as a catalyst for change in racial inequalities within the American justice system.
“That’s one of the questions we have to wrestle with: How do we shape a different system that doesn’t make it OK for these (police-involved) deaths to occur,” she said.
Franklin said the discussion on Thursday night was a good start.
“We have to go forward, and that’s what we’re doing here tonight, (that this discussion) would give birth to hope.”
One of the community read organizers, Donna Steele, said the League of Women Voters was happy with the participation they saw.
“We were delighted to see the level of interest in this conversation about race and enjoyed hearing how the book has really impacted students. We hope it is just one of many community conversations,” she said.
