A stunning photo of a Black woman confronting police at a Black Lives Matter rally blazed across social media, with some calling it a touchstone image that will stand as a powerful symbol for many years to come.
The photo, captured by Jonathan Bachman of Reuters, comes from a Black Lives Matter rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 9, 2016 . Police in full riot armor are shown descending on the poised, well-dressed woman, apparently about to be cuffed.
Her name is Ieshia Evans, then a 35-year-old nurse from Brooklyn, NY who had not been to a protest rally before. She was arrested for blocking a public roadway shortly after the image was taken.
DeRay McKesson, one of the most prominent voices of the Black Lives Matter movement, was also arrested at the rally. McKesson was released after 16 hours in a cell; he told the New York Times that he felt Saturday’s mass arrests were unlawful as the protesters were peacefully assembled on the side of the highway.
“What we saw in Baton Rouge was a police department that chose to provoke protesters to create, like, a context of conflict they could exploit,” said McKesson. Over 100 other protesters were also arrested.
The protests were a direct response to the killing of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge on July 5, 2016 after two officers shot him repeatedly outside a convenience store. Shortly after Sterling’s death, a school cafeteria worker, Philando Castile was shot and killed by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota while reaching for paperwork in his car. And at a protest rally in Dallas following Falcon Heights, five police officers were killed by snipers.
The violence over those few days has proved to be an intensely raw and revealing piece of American history. Bachman’s photo will surely be one of the images that lasts.
This article originally appeared seven years ago.
