Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/09/hbcu-black-students-nolan-wells

As the sun began to set, the students, many of whom wore black, marched through the historically Black university’s plaza chanting: “Nolan Wells, Trey Reed, Tasia Fortune, Kohen Wiley, Jaylen Lewis – Black Lives Matter!” All five were young Black Mississippians – the youngest, Wiley, was one-year-old while the eldest, Fortune, was 29 – who either died under suspicious circumstances or were killed by police.

The students wound through the campus, with school police and others looking on, continuing their chants until they made it to the Cofo Civil Rights Education Center. The building was significant: it was the organizational home for the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, a largely student-organized movement that aimed to increase Black voter participation during the Jim Crow era, and the statewide headquarters for the Council of Federated Organizations, a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress for Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“This is the first step of advocacy,” Camrynn Wimberly, a JSU student and one of the organizers of the march, said. “This is the first step of collective action and political power. The more this spreads, the more we continuously advocate for the same thing and let them know that we will not stand idly by as rights are stripped from us, as parents grieve, as we wonder whether or not we will be next – that is the first step to something greater.”