Two days after George Floyd was killed by the police in Minneapolis, Zee Thomas, 15, posted a tweet: “If my mom says yes I’m leading a Nashville protest.”
Thomas had never been to a protest, let alone organized one. And yet, five days later, with the help of five other teenagers, she was leading a march through her city, some 10,000 strong.
“We didn’t have a podium or anything, we were standing on water coolers to speak,” Thomas said. “I’m an introvert, and when I got up there I was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing?’ But I kept going.”
Thomas and her co-organizers didn’t know it at the time, but in cities across the country, other young women were doing something similar.