On Monday, over 20 students and community members gathered on the steps of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library to demand justice for the deaths of 18-year-old Nolan Wells and 1-year-old Kohen Wiley. The walkout was co-organized by Beta Omega Chi, the Rhode Island chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Rhode Island School of Design Black Artists and Designers.
Kenneth Kalu ’27, a member of BOX and an organizer with PSL, told The Herald that the walkout aimed to provide a space for remembrance for Wells and Wiley and to show that demonstrators “will not stop fighting for Black liberation and for justice until we obtain it.”
Nolan Wells was a Black college student who was found dead on Horn Island, Mississippi, after a boat trip with friends on July 4. While the local sheriff and a grand jury concluded that his death likely involved no foul play, an autopsy performed by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office found evidence of an injury to the back of his head.
Less than a month earlier, police officers in Mississippi were called to respond to a shoplifting case and shot into a departing vehicle, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley. On Oct. 19, the Mississippi Attorney General ruled that the officer’s actions were justified and that he would face no criminal charges.
“This is not the first time that we’ve been robbed of justice when our people are killed,” Kalu said.
Following the Mississippi ruling, the three Providence organizations collaborated to host the walkout. Kalu, who spoke at the demonstration, criticized the criminal justice system’s handling of Wells’s and Wiley’s deaths.
At the walkout, University of Rhode Island Adjunct Instructor of Africana Studies Marco McWilliams delivered a speech imploring the Black community to stand in solidarity with each other and learn from the Civil Rights activists of the past to demand justice today.
“We have to fight and struggle and bleed and love and resist for Black life,” McWilliams said. “The system is never going to give us that. It’s not designed to do that. It’s designed to do the opposite.”
In another speech, BOX member Tristan Ward ’27 said that instances of injustice, such as the deaths of Wiley and Wells, are part of “an unbeatable system” that forces the Black community to constantly feel “despair.”
“Sometimes it can feel never-ending, like an endless cycle of news about the next one of us that is gunned down,” Ward said. “(Wiley’s) life matters less in the system than a $9.99 pack of diapers,” Ward added, “They don’t want us to know that we can actually do something about this.”
“We fought for our civil rights and won many things,” Ward said. “These things are proof that when we fight, we win.”
“The problem is bigger than one politician,” Trent Manning, a small business owner and an organizer with PSL, said in a speech. “The problem is bigger than one political party, bigger than one state. We are talking about a system that was built on the genocide of indigenous people ... and then the exploitation of Black people.”
Manning said that the United States is still feeling the consequences of this system that “truly devalues Black lives.”
“We are not here to wait for another election, another investigation, another empty promise or another politician to tell us that justice is coming,” Manning said in his speech. “We are here to demand it.”
Following the speeches on the steps of the Rock, protestors marched to Prospect Terrace to conclude the walkout.
Nadine McCall, president of RISD Black Artists and Designers and a speaker at the walkout, told The Herald that since RISD is a smaller school, collaborating with BOX and PSL to organize a walkout provided a great opportunity to draw more support. She contended that this is important because there are several “false narratives” online regarding Wells’s and Wiley’s deaths.
“We thought that coming together would be a very powerful message for people that don’t know and for people that need to know the real truth,” McCall said.
Marat Basaria is a senior staff writer covering activism.
