Listen to Marley’s Story

Marley 

My name is Marley Nichelle and this is me looking extremely helpless in the photo because of my background and where I come from in South Carolina and my Gullah culture. I come from a segregated area where community is based around blackness and Black people coming together all the time. And so on this specific day, when I walked on Fourth Street, I just felt a lot of grief, a lot of pain, anger, hurt. And I felt extremely helpless because I didn't know what to say. I didn't know the languages that I should speak because I'm not from here. This was just my second year here. So I had to really try to just, you know, put myself into a space where I feel what everyone around me is feeling and validate myself in a lot of ways because I was helpless and I did feel like I didn't really know what words to really pull together to say. Every day since this day, community has responded in valid ways, whether it was out of anger, frustration, pain, grief, just sheer trauma, like a lot of people responded in valid ways because this is a real narrative. This is not a conspiracy. This really happened and those feelings are really valid and how the community progressed over the years with healing, with showing up, um, I'm glad that I had the chance to show up as well. This particular weekend of 2017 really triggered and inspired my Geechee, you know, roots to really come out. And even though I have a different background, it challenged me to like try to put narratives into this community of what community is to me. And this this moment really kind of triggered me to be where I am today. That's why I've always showed up for this community. I've always showed up where I followed their lead. So this is a powerful photo.

Music credit: Licention / Trimorphic / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com