Scranton Woman Featured in Viral Black Lives Matter Protest Photo
This is the work of God. Im a vessel,Glory to the most high! Im alive and safe. I have not witnessed any casualties pic.twitter.com/Njze1doX6O
— Ieshia Evans (@IeshiaEvans) July 11, 2016
A photo of a young woman being arrested by two Louisiana State Police officers last week during a Black Lives Matter protest has gone viral, and the woman featured lives near Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The subject is being identified as 28-year-old Ieshia Evans, a nurse who traveled to attend demonstrations in Baton Rouge, Louisiana last Saturday after hearing about Alton Sterling, a black man who was killed by two police officers last week.
Reuters photographer Jonathan Bachman captured the viral Black Lives Matter protest photo. Evans stands tall in the image in a long, flowing sundress, looking calm yet defiant as she’s arrested by two suited-up officers. A large crack in the pavement divides Evans from the police.
Bachman told the Atlantic that Evans approached the line of police officers aware that she would be arrested. Evans didn’t say anything or resist arrest, Bachman said, and the whole encounter “wasn’t very violent.”
He added that the situation was representative of the peaceful demonstrations he’s seen in the wake of last week’s controversial police-involved killings and resulting protests across the country that have sparked nationwide debates about racism.
R. Alex Haynes, who claims to be friends with Evans, said Evans attended the protest because of her 5-year-old son. After the photograph was posted to Facebook, Haynes said in a comment that Evans wanted to “look her son in the eyes to tell him she fought for his freedom and rights.”
Bachman’s photo has been compared to the iconic 1989 image of a man staring down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Bachman told BuzzFeed it was the first photograph he transferred to Reuters from his camera on Saturday, as he knew it would be “important.”
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