First she saw the graphic cellphone video showing Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting death in Georgia, then news that Breonna Taylor had been shot in her Kentucky home during a botched drug raid. But when Teresa Parks watched videos of the white Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee onto a Black man's neck, and heard George Floyd cry out for his mother as his life drained away, she was spurred not just to tears, but also to action.
After Floyd's May 2020 death, Parks and a friend formed a Black Lives Matter group in their hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, a largely white city that had elected no Black leaders since 1969. Parks' activism led to her appointment to a task force that city leaders said was designed to make the community more welcoming to people from diverse backgrounds.
