Big Freedom Dreams: Porche Bennett-Bey Knows What Time It Is In Kenosha

Activism is alive and well around the United States. In the Midwest, movements like Black Lives Matter continue to serve as the collective conscience of a region that grapples with violence against African Americans, as well as inequity across a range of social and economic indicators. The “Big Freedom Dreams” series profiles Midwestern Black activists making their mark.

In Aug. 2020, Jacob S. Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot and seriously injured by a police officer in this city of about 100,000 between Milwaukee and Chicago.

Protests engulfed the area. Among those paying attention was Porche Bennett-Bey, 31, who was already active as an organizer in the community.

She had a message for a visiting Joe Biden, then running for president, when he came to town about a month after the shooting that left Blake partially paralyzed: Life in Kenosha was tough for African Americans.

“A lot of people won’t tell the truth,” she said at the time. “But I’m telling the truth.”

Among Bennett-Bey’s truths about Kenosha, where about 12 percent of the population is Black: Gentrification translates into limited affordable housing, police target the city’s minority population and there is a lack of promising job opportunities for people of color.

These facts about life in many Midwestern communities may not be apparent to observers in other parts of the country, said Ashley Howard, a history professor at the University of Iowa.  Popular perceptions of the Midwest as the nation’s “good guy” compared to the Deep South essentially whitewash the truth.

“Non-Midwesterners may have a hard time reconciling the shortcomings of our region,” Howard said. “Because they’re comparing it to another place. And therefore, any challenges to that oppression, to that inequity can be written off as, ‘Well, you all are just complaining, it could be much worse. Everything’s fine for you.’”

• READ: Ashley Howard’s Washington Post contribution, “The Midwest has always been a site of Black political activism”

For speaking up and speaking out, Bennett-Bey caught the attention of TIME magazine, which named her among its “Guardians of the Year” for 2020.

After learning of the recognition, Bennett-Bey told local news outlets she was honored but there was more work to be done.

“I am still Porche Bennett-Bey, the girl from Kenosha who’s an activist,” Bennett-Bey told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “This pushes me to go harder. I want others, especially women, to not be afraid to find your voice and use it for the good and be a part of this change.”

To learn more about African American activism in the Midwest, visit AfricanAmericanMidwest.com

Holly Edgell is a journalist living in St. Louis, Missouri. Follow her on Twitter @hollyedgell.