Vivian Anderson was living in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015 when a friend told her about video clips of a white police officer dragging a young Black girl from her desk and body-slamming her to the ground. Videos showed then-Spring Valley High School police officer Ben Fields in Columbia, South Carolina,Like many Black women who have become overwhelmed by the traumatic experience of seeing videos ofagainst other Black women and girls, Anderson had braced herself to watch the videos.
But instead, she stumbled upon another video out of Spring Valley High. It was a clip featuring Shakara’s classmate:, a high school senior at the time who was being released from jail. She had been arrested under a vague South Carolina “disturbing schools” law after encouraging her peers to take out their cellphones and film Fields, who was called to their math class after Shakara got into a verbal disagreement with their teacher about having her phone out.
Anderson, who now resides in Columbia, still remembers how she felt when she watched interviews of Kenny being asked why she decided to speak up for her classmate. “She was like … ‘Because she had nobody else,’” Anderson said. “I get emotional every time I think about it. … I remember my heart just felt like somebody had punched it ... and all I felt was, ‘Here’s a girl calling folks to action.’”
“This girl should not have to be carrying this weight alone,” Anderson said she remembered thinking at the time.