Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best was watching the television news in her bedroom in late May when she first saw video footage of George Floyd being suffocated under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

“Honestly, I was mortified,” Chief Best recalls. “It’s almost like you are watching it, but you can’t believe what you are seeing,” she says. Then “you realize you just witnessed a man’s last few minutes on earth. It was incredibly devastating.”

A 28-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and its first Black leader, appointed in 2018, Chief Best knew instantly that protests would erupt following the “blatant, grave disregard for human life.”

But Chief Best doubts she or anyone could have anticipated the intensity of the nationwide demonstrations against police brutality that followed – or their dramatic, far-reaching impact on her own police department and personal views about how policing in America must change.

CHOP challenge

Within two weeks, Chief Best was managing a crisis that she described to fellow officers as “one of the toughest times ever in the history of the Seattle Police Department.” Huge Black Lives Matter protests led to escalating clashes with police and the chaotic, headline-grabbing occupation of a six-block section of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, including the SPD’s East Precinct building.

After the city ordered the removal of barricades, police removed weapons and other sensitive items, and were effectively shut out of the “no cop” protest zone, dubbed the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and later the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). Activists and supporters flocked to the area, which many saw as an experiment for new relationships between law enforcement and their communities. But in the following weeks, gun violence escalated, and by the end of June, two young Black men had been shot and killed in the vicinity.

“Two African American men are dead, at a place where they claim to be working for Black Lives Matter. But they’re gone, they’re dead now,” Chief Best told a press conference, her frustration mounting. “Enough is enough.”

Today, the future of the Seattle Police Department is no less complex than the messy situation Chief Best and her officers face on the ground. Since 2011, when the U.S. Justice Department found a pattern of unconstitutional use of force within the SPD, the department has undergone exhaustive, court-guided reforms. Seattle became a leader in crisis response training, mandated by a 2012 federal consent decree, with Chief Best playing an integral role in ensuring compliance. But “these policies seem like ancient history now,” she wrote in a June 22 letter to the Seattle community.

The city has been gripped by street protests against police brutality, with activists calling for “defunding” the police – slashing its $409 million budget by as much as 50% – and shifting the money to community services. Calls to 911, for example, might be moved outside the Police Department, since most do not involve violent crime. The City Council began debating defunding proposals on Wednesday, with four of nine members backing the 50% budget cut idea. In June, the council banned police use of chokeholds and crowd control munitions such as tear gas. The SPD’s use of force during protests that were largely peaceful sparked thousands of complaints and calls by activists for Chief Best to resign.

“We have to engage”

But rather than defending her record and resisting the historic push for change, Chief Best – one of only a handful of women of color to lead a big-city police department in the United States – has kept an open mind. She joined a silent Black Lives Matter march of between 66,000 and 85,000 people through southern Seattle on June 12, an outpouring that proved transformative to her own thinking.

Elaine Thompson/AP

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best (center) bumps elbows in greeting an officer as the chief walks the perimeter of an area police cleared hours earlier on July 1, 2020, in Seattle. For weeks, streets had been blocked off in an area occupied by demonstrators after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

As the marchers crossed Rainier Avenue South, Chief Best stepped aside for a minute to watch the crowd flow quietly by. “The vast majority were carrying signs, and many of the signs were specifically about the Seattle Police Department, defunding SPD, stopping police brutality, looking at qualified immunity, all these really important issues,” she says.

Gazing at the faces, she had an epiphany, realizing where all the years of SPD reforms had fallen short. “Even with all that work ... very clearly there are people who still feel a lack of trust,” she says. “It’s not enough to check the boxes and follow all those rules. We have to engage in a much deeper and more ... real-time way” with the community.

The U.S. is in the midst of nothing less than “a social justice reckoning four-hundred years in the making,” Chief Best wrote in her letter to the Seattle community 10 days later. What is needed, she says, is “a complete re-envisioning of community safety and the police department’s role in it.” The community must not just advise, but lead, in this effort to create a new model of public safety, she believes.

A major part of a reimagined police force could involve shifting some duties to civilian community organizations, she says. For example, crisis intervention could be handled by mental health professionals, while homeless outreach and advocacy could be diverted to other agencies.

Working together

Yet while Chief Best embraces change, she remains an advocate for what she calls her SPD “family.” Raised in Tacoma, Washington, the oldest of four children in a military household, Chief Best enlisted in the Army during college, then joined SPD in 1992. Her rise through the ranks was not always easy. “I had my detractors, folks who weren’t as comfortable with my presence, but I also had a lot of people who supported me,” she says.

Still, she has been drawn to tightknit teams ever since. She makes it clear that she opposes budget cuts that would reduce the ranks of newly recruited officers, nearly 40% of whom are ethnic minorities – some of the SPD’s most diverse hiring.

She also pushes back against the ban on crowd control munitions. While acknowledging that police use of tear gas, pepper spray, and “blast balls” – similar to flash-bang grenades – repelled many peaceful protesters in addition to the much smaller contingents of “real bad actors” in the crowds, she still believes they are important tools.

“In hindsight, clearly we could have had different tactics,” she says. “But I don’t believe we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is much safer to use those types of munitions than it is to leave officers with only riot batons and guns like in the ’60s.”

Her plan? “Let’s have the community engage with this, and they can determine what is peaceful and what is not, what’s acceptable, what’s not, so we do a better job.”

During the CHOP standoff last month and calls for her resignation, Chief Best did turn to the community. Some Black activists and clergy helped defuse the conflict, urging CHOP protesters to leave the area, despite others’ objections.

“We stand with you,” the Rev. Harriett Walden of Mothers for Police Accountability told Chief Best at a prayer gathering with Black clergy at Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church on June 14. “We know that Black women in leadership have a hard time, and sometimes people like to crush them,” she said. “I would never let anybody ... crush a Black woman in front of me.”

Police moved into the CHOP zone early on July 1, retaking the East Precinct building without any significant injuries to officers or protesters. The precinct is now up and running again.

At heart, Chief Best says, she’s stayed with the force for nearly three decades because she believes “there is a role for the police service to really be helpful.”

“When I came out of the womb,” she told the prayer gathering, “I was a Black woman. When I leave this earth, I will be a Black woman.” Serving as police chief is “just a moment in time,” she said, “and I want to use it for good.”

Martin Kuz/The Christian Science Monitor

Kevin Thomas, shown June 24, 2020, at a city park in Buffalo, Wyoming, participated in a recent protest in support of Black Lives Matter and racial justice in the town of fewer than 4,600 residents.

The latest census data for this Old West town tucked into the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains counts 31 Black residents among its population of almost 4,600. Kevin Thomas figures he knows at least half of them.

“It’s not hard,” he says. “When you’re Black in small-town Wyoming, you’re aware of one another.”

Mr. Thomas, a Texas native, moved to Buffalo a decade ago, seeking distance from the drugs and violence that ensnared him in his hometown of Galveston. A husband and father, he has steadied his life here, working as a nursing assistant and running a landscaping business.

Given that 9 out of 10 residents are white in his adopted town, Mr. Thomas never expected its streets to provide the backdrop for a protest in support of Black Lives Matter and racial justice. Three weeks ago, when he learned of a planned demonstration only a couple of hours ahead of time, he rushed home to round up his two children.

They donned T-shirts showing a raised fist above the hashtag #BLM and joined more than 75 people to march a half-mile from the county justice center to the town square. Nearly all of their fellow protesters were white.

“I was ecstatic,” Mr. Thomas says. “The fact that you have white folks who are willing to do this without understanding or experiencing what we experience as Black people – for them to speak up for us? It was empowering.”

If modest in size, the rally reflected the extraordinary breadth of the grassroots movement against police violence and racial inequality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Unlike other large-scale demonstrations since the Vietnam War, the ongoing protests have spread beyond urban centers to outer suburbs and small towns in all 50 states, with an estimated 15 million to 26 million people taking part in more than 2,500 municipalities.

The groundswell has swept across rural America, where about 80% of the population is white, inspiring protests in unexpected locales, including Victor, Idaho (pop. 2,300), Atoka, Oklahoma (pop. 3,100), and South Royalton, Vermont (pop. 700). In Wyoming, the country’s least populous state, hundreds of demonstrators turned out last month in Riverton (pop. 11,000), Cody (pop. 9,800), and Pinedale (pop. 1,900).

High school and college students, their academic pursuits slowed by the pandemic, have organized many of the rural protests and injected urgency into the cause. Their desire to promote racial justice in small towns – defying threats and derision from counterprotesters who they know as classmates, co-workers, and neighbors – reveals an audacity that experts in social movements predict could deliver historic change.

“White people, and especially young white people, are using their privilege to make their voices heard in rural parts of the country,” says Sharon Elise, a professor of sociology at California State University, San Marcos. “They live in small towns or grew up there, but they don’t want to feel isolated. They want to connect to this bigger movement and have equality – true equality – for all people.”

“Silence sustains the status quo”

In early June, Rowan Heil and two friends drove a half-hour from Buffalo to Sheridan, a city of nearly 18,000 people, to attend a Black Lives Matter protest that drew some 500 marchers. The trio of teenagers found strength in the display of solidarity and returned home determined to bring the movement to Buffalo.

“To be white in America is to be privileged. But a lot of white people haven’t realized that or are just starting to,” says Ms. Heil, who graduated high school in May. “I want people of color to live in a world where they have the same choices and opportunities that I do.”

She announced plans for the protest on Facebook and received dozens of supportive responses. Several others attacked her. The hostility soon migrated offline as customers at her restaurant job accused her of trying to incite violence and drivers honked as they roared past her home late at night. Their reaction reaffirmed her conviction.

Martin Kuz/The Christian Science Monitor

Rowan Heil, shown June 23, 2020, at a city park in Buffalo, Wyoming, helped organize a recent protest in support of Black Lives Matter and racial justice in the town of fewer than 4,600 residents.

“People here say, ‘Racism exists because we talk about it too much,’” she says, shaking her head. She mentioned racial disparities in income, education, and housing, the higher incarceration rate of people of color, and the greater toll of the pandemic on minorities. “Silence sustains the status quo, and the status quo benefits white people.”

Ms. Heil notified police of the march, and officers in squad cars created a moving cordon to buffer the demonstrators, a mix of preteens, high school students, parents, and seniors. The group departed the justice center with Ms. Heil carrying a handmade sign that quoted Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Others held signs that read “We Stand With You” and “We All Must Do Better.”

Twenty minutes later, they reached the town square, where protesters took turns addressing the gathering from a stage, their individual messages bound by a common appeal for racial unity. A handful of counterprotesters in pickup trucks, some flying Confederate battle flags, drove past and revved engines as they attempted to drown out the speakers. A small group of bystanders shouted “All lives matter!” and “Trump 2020!” The crowd answered with “Black lives matter!” and “Wyoming is love!”

The march exposed the fraught personal dimensions of small-town activism, even without descending into physical conflict as occurred at a rally in Bethel, Ohio (pop. 2,800). Ms. Heil spotted former classmates among the counterprotesters. Police Chief Jason Carder, whose son graduated with her, saw teenagers and parents he recognized in both groups as he watched over the gathering.

Mr. Carder understood that the protesters sought to call attention to racial inequality rather than sow anti-police sentiment, and he viewed the efforts of Ms. Heil and her friends through the lens of generational change. “Young people today are aware of what’s happening around the country, and some of them want to be part of that,” he says. “So in some ways, it isn’t surprising we would have a demonstration.”

Following the speeches, protesters knelt in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds – the length of time that a Minneapolis police officer knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck as two other officers pinned him down and a fourth stood watch. Tears pooled in Meseret Tegenu’s eyes as she gazed across the square.

The Wyoming native has gained painful familiarity with day-to-day racism in the “Equality State” – the stares, the slurs, the condescension. “It’s exhausting,” says Ms. Tegenu, the daughter of a Black father and white mother. “You feel like you’re being watched all the time.”

A landscape designer and the mother of two children, she stays in Wyoming for its natural beauty, mellow pace, and affordability. She moved to Buffalo a couple of years ago, and as a “stubborn optimist,” she retains hope that Ms. Heil’s generation and the rise of “woke” culture will push the state to fulfill its nickname.

“You have people here who will be super cordial to you but who don’t support Black Lives Matter or can’t understand why we need this movement,” she says. “I do think that in most cases they’re good people. They just need to be educated.”

Martin Kuz/The Christian Science Monitor

A sign outside a business along Fort Street in Buffalo, Wyoming, is shown June 24, 2020. The sign stands along the route that protesters walked during a recent march in support of Black Lives Matter and racial justice.

Impatient hopefulness

A TV interviewer once asked Morgan Freeman how the country could end racism. “Stop talking about it,” the actor replied.

Buffalo Mayor Shane Schrader, who avoided last month’s protest, invoked Mr. Freeman’s line of thinking as he discussed the arrival of the Black Lives Matter movement to his town. At the same time, he adds, “We can’t stay in our 5,000-person bubble forever. We have to realize there are things going on in the rest of the world that will affect us.”

The awakening in Buffalo and rural areas across the country illuminates the growing influence of Black Lives Matter, particularly among young adults. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans ages 18 to 29 hold a “very favorable” impression of the movement.

As protests against racial injustice continue, the country has witnessed an eruption of activism reminiscent of the civil rights era, with two distinctions that hold potential to power an even broader movement.

“There are so many non-Blacks involved, and there’s so much happening in rural towns,” says Aldon Morris, a professor of sociology and African American studies at Northwestern University, and author of “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.” “We’ve never seen either of those before.”

Dr. Morris explains that white supporters served as foot soldiers in some of the period’s largest demonstrations, including the March on Washington in 1963 and the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, two years later.

But studies of the era show that Black activists provided most of the grassroots energy behind civil rights, and “that was even more true in rural areas,” he says. “White college students were involved in urban areas. There wasn’t a mass movement among whites in small towns.”

The protests of the past six weeks suggest a spirit of activism has taken root among young white adults in rural areas. Ms. Heil, who will study musical theater at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia starting in the fall, embodies the new attitude.

“It’s up to my generation,” says Ms. Heil, who organized a #MeToo awareness campaign at Buffalo High School. “We need to keep speaking out. That’s the only way change will actually happen.”

Jamie Schlegel shares that resolve. An international relations student at the University of Southern California, she returned home to Sheridan amid the coronavirus outbreak. In late May, as unrest flared in Minneapolis and other cities over Mr. Floyd’s death, she felt disconnected from the moment.                                                                 

She decided to channel her frustration into organizing a demonstration with a few friends. They expected 30 people to show up. The turnout exceeded 500, offering evidence that the cause of racial equality has resonated in rural America.

“This isn’t just an issue for cities, for New York and LA. It’s an issue everywhere,” Ms. Schlegel says. She regards the future of the movement with impatient hopefulness as Generation Z and millennials add racial justice to their “to solve” list that includes climate change, school shootings, and college debt.

“We’ve seen the lack of change from older generations,” she says. “So they can either choose to support us or step aside because we’re the ones who have to deal with all this for the next several decades.”

The ongoing protests have pressured cities and states to adopt police reforms and remove statues of Confederate leaders, the Founding Fathers, and Christopher Columbus. But Dr. Morris, who grew up in Mississippi under Jim Crow laws, cautions that the momentum will falter if young Americans fail to deliver their message from the streets to the voting booth.

“There’s reason for optimism that real change could happen,” he says. “But it would be naive to think change is inevitable. Elections will show whether the young generations are actually different from their parents.”

For the sake of his young son and daughter, Mr. Thomas, the Texas native who has found peace in Wyoming, wants to believe that racial equality lies ahead for the country.

During the march in Buffalo last month, two counterprotesters directed racial epithets at him. He remained calm in a way that had eluded him as a younger man, and a short time later, a pair of white women approached. They asked to hug him.

“My kids should be free to grow up in a culture where they don’t feel hated because they’re Black,” he says. “There’s a long way to go, but I do have hope.” He smiled. “I mean, if a protest can happen in Buffalo, there’s hope.”

From the very start of the American-led invasion of Afghanistan almost 19 years ago, Russian experts were shaking their heads and warning that it would not turn out well.

However, the Kremlin warmly welcomed the occupation. It provided intelligence and logistical support, and repeatedly urged NATO to stay and “finish the job” of defeating the Taliban. Moscow’s main concern, then and now, was that the victory of extreme Islamist forces in Afghanistan would promote instability and insurrection in the vulnerable former Soviet states of central Asia, as it had prior to the U.S. intervention in 2001.

In the past few years, as it became clear that the United States intends to get out of Afghanistan, Russian attention has shifted to efforts to ensure that the more moderate, nationalist factions of the Taliban prevail over the group’s radical Islamist wing and the insurgents linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group. Moscow has indirectly reached out to the Taliban in open efforts to nudge the peace process in a moderate direction. And Russian experts agree that Russian intelligence may also have forged more confidential links with Taliban leaders.

But the accusation that a Russian GRU military intelligence unit has been paying Taliban-linked militants $100,000 “bounties” for killing American soldiers has blindsided official Moscow. And even the Kremlin’s critics in the expert community now complain that U.S. intelligence about Russia has become completely detached from reality. Instead, they say it serves only to fuel what they describe as a political civil war between President Donald Trump and his opponents in Washington.

“It is not in Russia’s interest to see a rapid U.S. withdrawal,” says Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry, “since that would increase the threat of extremists coming to power in Kabul.”

Alexander Sekretarev/AP/File

Russia has firsthand experience with the dangers of Afghanistan, thanks to the Soviet Union's long, grinding war there in the 1980s against the mujahideen, at whom the Soviet soldiers shown are firing in April 1988. That makes Russians wary about the U.S. leaving the region too quickly.

“Something that counterproductive”

Russia has been involved in Afghanistan since the czars jostled for influence – sometimes violently – with the British Empire amid the forbidding Hindu Kush in a long 19th-century competition that has been memorialized as “the Great Game.”     

More recently, the Soviet Union quite literally broke apart after a costly and futile military effort to tame Afghanistan in the 1980s. In its nine-year intervention, the USSR lost 15,000 troops in battle against the mujahideen, forerunners of today’s Taliban, who had received $20 billion in U.S. assistance. That disastrous experience left Russian public opinion deeply averse to any future involvement in the country.

“Unlike the U.S., we have to live in this neighborhood, and we are deeply concerned about what comes next in Afghanistan,” says Mr. Kortunov. That’s why he says the bounty story makes “no sense at all” in terms of Russian concerns – hastening a U.S. retreat from the region increases the chance of a return to the bad old days in Afghanistan.

“Of course you can never underestimate the intelligence of Russian secret services, and some of the things they do. But it’s awfully hard to see them coming up with something that counterproductive,” he says.

Alexander Golts, an independent security expert and Kremlin critic who is presently at Uppsala University in Sweden, is even more scathing.

“For most of my life I have assumed that if something appears in the U.S. media, it is certainly a strongly reported story and probably true. Lately, I have my doubts,” Mr. Golts says. “I understand that in U.S. eyes, Russia is an evil-doer. But I know that people who work in Russian military intelligence are rational actors. I fail to find any reasonable motivation Russia could possibly have to kill American soldiers – and at such a high price, may I add cynically?”

“Our problem”

The Kremlin has labeled the story “fake news” and President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, fired back this week with an unsubstantiated accusation of his own.

“Those wonderful U.S. intelligence officers, who accuse us of different things, are involved in drug trafficking. Their planes from Kandahar, from Bagram [Airfield near Kabul] are flying wherever they want to – to Germany, to Romania – without any inspections,” he said. “Every citizen of Kabul will tell you that. Everyone is ready to talk about that.”

The explosion of poppy production and heroin export since NATO occupied Afghanistan remains a major sore point for Russia.

“Opiates from Afghanistan are a huge problem for Russia,” says Mr. Kortunov. “They have killed more Russians than the Soviet war in Afghanistan ever did.”

Some Western outlets have suggested that Russian intelligence may be hunting American troops as payback for the CIA’s support for the Afghan mujahideen who defeated the USSR in the 1980s.

But “the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is more than 30 years old,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow foreign-policy journal. “Nobody associated with that is in power today, and Russia isn’t even the same country. Moscow backed the U.S. when they went into Afghanistan, and they’ve been there for almost 20 years. Why on earth would anyone go looking for revenge now?”

Vladimir Sotnikov, an expert with the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, says that Russia is consulting with other countries in the region, including China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and India, to try to find ways to manage what is now seen as an inevitable U.S. withdrawal.

“The biggest nightmare is that Afghanistan becomes a ‘failed state’ again, with dangerous repercussions all over the region,” he says. “We have no interest in aggravating the situation, or hastening U.S. departure. Afghanistan is going to be our problem long after the U.S. has left.”

Jose Luis Magana/AP/File

Tomiko Shine holds up a picture of Tamir Rice during a protest in Washington, D.C., Dec. 1, 2014. Tamir was killed by police in November 2014 as he played with a pellet gun outside a Cleveland recreation center.

My three boys were all towering over their classmates by fourth grade. Their dad played basketball at UCLA and I’m nearly 5 feet, 9 inches tall so they were tall, athletic boys. The night before their first playdate in Los Angeles alone, I decide it was time for “the talk.”

“The talk” happens early in a Black child’s life, and typically includes a list of instructions that Black parents give their children to keep them safe. It’s a playbook for how to behave so that a police officer or other authority figure isn’t threatened by their brown bodies: Do not run through stores. Do not play pranks on adults. Do not disobey any laws. If you encounter police, do not act aggressively. Keep your hands still. Speak softly while saying that you’re an honor student and asking that your mom be called.

At first, my sons laughed. Surely, I wasn’t serious, they thought. No way would they have to act differently than their white friends because of the color of their skin. When I insisted that they would, they wept. “We’re good boys with good grades,” they wailed. “We’re popular and great athletes,” they continued. They cried that they didn’t want to think about the color of their skin.

I reassured them that they’d done nothing wrong. That they were perfect little boys. That I was so proud to be their mother. While hugging them, I said, “Your brown skin is the most beautiful thing in the world!”

Finally, after drying their tears, my sons promised to be on best behavior while on playdates alone. They vowed to be orderly, not to bring undue attention to themselves. They swore that if they had an encounter with the police, they would be calm, keep their hands in view, and not do anything to cause the police to feel threatened.

There were more instructions for my oldest. He needed to immediately say that he has an autism diagnosis and needs help following instructions. I practiced with him how to hold his hands still.

By bedtime, I felt confident that they’d do everything in their power to make it home safely from their playdate the next day. I gave them hope before I kissed them good night: “Most Americans are good people, who will see past the color of your skin and glean the essence of your beautiful beings,” I said, softly.

Then, when the house was quiet, it was my turn: I wept. I heard the still, small voice of my Big Mama, who had a fourth-grade education as she shared stories about working as a domestic for white families in the South​. I remembered the “white only” signs that my mother rushed past to get to Michigan to earn her Ph.D. in education in the 1960s so that she could become the first African American and the first woman to be the superintendent of Compton Unified School District.

As I write this, I hear her voice, whispering to me, “I’m tired,” from her hospital bed where she died at the young age of 67 after a decadeslong struggle with cancer. I weep as I think about the Rodney King riots and how my local 7-Eleven exploded in flames after I left with a gallon of milk for my youngest son.

A Black mommy knows that she can’t wait for society to change. She shields her boys from the dysfunction of racism while telling her babies that she loves their brown skin. She explains that racism is illogical while encouraging her brown babies to be all that they can be. She loves her boys while teaching them that their brown skin could be despised, dehumanized, and, sometimes, brutalized in their country that they love. She informs them that those with brown skin can become a menace to society while watching birds, playing music in a car, walking down the street, or driving to work. 

We protect our babies from America’s ill of never realizing its creed that all men are created equal. A Black mom explains the complexity of living in a country whose foundation was built on the backs of strong, enslaved Black men, who built the White House in Washington, D.C. A country that never, completely, destroyed its shackles of slavery, that never tore down its monuments of the Confederacy, and that never, completely, bulldozed the de facto walls of segregation. A country that then tried to erase its bloody history, thus, effectively, infecting all of its systems with the virus of racism. A country that, desperately, needs to heal. 

But no matter how difficult, Black parents must have “the  talk.” We must live with the paradox of protecting our children from racism in the country that we love. And so I pray that my beloved country will be able to find the love to see my children as I do, as perfect boys who’ve made their mama and this country proud. 

Meme Kelly is a writer and the proud mother of three young Black men. The youngest is a creative assistant to successful Hollywood producers, the middle is a marketing executive who climbed to the top of his field, and the oldest, the one with the autism diagnosis, is a fun-loving fella who volunteers and works part time.

In June, Samantha Friedman, mother of boys ages 6 and 11, hosted one of the first “social distance” camps staffed by Koa Sports at her house. Her sons and a small group of their friends played baseball, basketball, and street hockey, and battled with water balloons and squirt guns. 

Ms. Friedman says the camp was “one of the greatest ideas ever,” as she could start her interior design work again, and her children were able to socialize and play sports again after not playing for four months. 

“I think they liked being with their friends again,” says the Gaithersburg, Maryland, parent. “We liked that they were sweaty and running around and tired again and not on electronics.”

In the face of public health restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, the summer camp experience is changing. Groups are experimenting with alternative formats including backyard camps, “camp in a box” (where families are sent supplies), and online camps – some of which could continue throughout the year. Parents are grateful for the break provided by supervised sports and nature journaling, while organizations – mostly those involved in non-overnight offerings – manage engaging activities and the health and legal rules that come with new approaches.

“We had two options: innovate and pivot, or shut down,” says Tony Korson, founder and CEO of Koa Sports, based in Bethesda, Maryland. “The communities and kids need us. The parents need child care, and the kids need activities with their buddies. We decided that’s more important, and we’re going to come up with these hours upon hours of procedures and policies to make this work.” 

Courtesy of Koa Sports League

Koa Sports in Rockville, Maryland, uses cones and pool noodles to keep campers socially distanced for games such as kickball, tag, tennis, and baseball.

This summer, about 19.5 million of the 26 million children who normally attend a day or overnight summer camp in the United States will not have camp experiences, says Tom Rosenberg, president and CEO of the American Camp Association (ACA). A majority of overnight camps are closed this year, with a few states including Oregon, New York, and Connecticut banning them. Some overnight camps have closed recently due to coronavirus outbreaks, and officials are monitoring outbreaks at day camps as well. 

Mr. Rosenberg praises the pivot some groups have made to online offerings, which he says “are a wonderful way for kids to socially and emotionally connect,” after sheltering in their homes without peer-to-peer connection for weeks. Online camps may continue throughout the year, he says. 

City Kids Wilderness Project canceled its in-person summer camps in Jackson, Wyoming, this year, creating instead a virtual camp for the 130 children it would have hosted from Washington, D.C.

“This is the first summer in our 24-year history that we can’t do camp in Wyoming. We didn’t want kids to miss out or lose their connection with us,” says Monique Dailey, program director for City Kids, which is continuing to offer yoga, environmental films, and journaling prompts to campers. 

But some groups, like Koa, are forging ahead with in-person offerings. Koa opened camps with reduced capacity, and also started its first-ever social distance camps. Parents can pay for Koa to send two counselors to a host family’s house to run camp for a small group of five to eight children. In the first week of operation in June, the program ran at 10 houses, then jumped to 25 houses the next week, with enrollment continuing to be strong in July. The social distance camp is insured, and staff wear masks and sanitize equipment. 

Ms. Friedman, the Maryland mother who hosted one of the Koa programs, says she has a large yard that’s conducive to a backyard camp. For families without that resource, organizations have tried other tactics.

Community Kids, a Christian nonprofit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ran three weeks of a backyard summer camp locally in June. It brought in activities, a meal, an hour of Bible study, fire pits, and tents for backyard campouts. Midway through the program, the governor lifted closures on parks, and Community Kids moved many activities to local parks after finding the small, urban backyards of their participants were getting too crowded. 

Courtesy of Community Kids

Aubrey Frazier and Laniya Morris participate in a backyard summer camp organized by Community Kids, a Christian nonprofit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 2020.

For Neal Waldman, who runs a tour agency for students and who previously owned a summer camp in Maine, pivoting to an at-home camp made sense as demand fell for student tours. In June he launched SummerCamp2u, serving families in New England, and he’s partnering with Next Level  2 U camp in New York state and Steam Discovery Academy in Charlottesville, Virginia, to offer at-home backyard camps. 

“We’re trying to emulate all that magic from camp. There’s lots of values and morals from camp that we’re trying to capture,” says Mr. Waldman. 

Mr. Waldman and Mr. Korson say health and safety are the top priority for their at-home summer camps, noting that staff members are tested for COVID-19, are given temperature checks, and wear masks. All participants stay outside the host family’s house, except for a designated bathroom. Mask-wearing is left to parental discretion.

Abbe Klein of Needham, Massachusetts, hosted a backyard camp through SummerCamp2u for her 8-year-old twin daughters and two of their friends. Health and safety “was a big concern when we were deciding whether to do this,” she says. “It felt like they handled things in a way that made us feel comfortable.” 

Other backyard camps reportedly include teenagers setting up informal camps to watch neighborhood children. Mr. Rosenberg of the ACA warns parents to consider the risks of backyard camps, since without proper protocols, they could effectively be running unlicensed day care centers.

“If Mom and Dad have to work and they’re going to hire someone to look after kids, I think of that as babysitting. That’s not camp,” he says. “Camp is an immersive, multiday experience that is an organized camp that is professionally run” and follows extensive protocols, such as the 260 standards that ACA-accredited camps meet. 

Angelica Holmes was gearing up for her second summer of directing Camp Founder Girls, a historically Black summer camp for girls, when the coronavirus forced a change in plans. Camp Founder Girls is owned by Black Outside Inc, a San Antonio-based nonprofit, which aims to expand exposure and relevancy of the outdoors to children of color. 

At first Ms. Holmes thought they would need to cancel camp. But with protests erupting for social justice, and young people isolated for so long, running a program became a priority. So Camp Founder Girls ran for one week in June, and campers alternated between three days of in-person camp in small groups of 10, and two days of virtual camp. While together, the girls participated in socially distanced yoga and hikes, and on virtual days painted self-portraits and had game nights. 

“Our sense of community is so strong and so needed, not just for our girls, but for our counselors, even for me. It was so important to try and figure something out even if it required a lot,” says Ms. Holmes. “It’s really life-giving to be able to be around our girls. ... It makes it so worth it because the girls are just so excited.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include references to recent coronavirus outbreaks and closures at some camps. As a public service, all our coronavirus coverage is free. No paywall.

The Jefferson City News-Tribune via AP/File

WNBA star Maya Moore, right, calls Jonathan Irons as supporters react to his overturned conviction in a 1997 burglary and assault case. He was freed from prison July 1, 2020, after years of work by Moore and other supporters.

Her T-shirt read “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly” – three things God asks of His people in the Bible’s book of Micah.

When Jonathan Irons walked out of a prison in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a free man last week, Maya Moore couldn’t help but drop to her knees in gratitude. After becoming convinced of his innocence, Ms. Moore had spent years working to secure his release.

Another factor added to the drama of the moment: Last year, while still in her prime, Ms. Moore had given up her career as a superstar in the Women’s National Basketball Association to devote her full attention to the case. 

She wasn’t someone who’d just had a brush with professional sports. Ms. Moore is a six-time WNBA All-Star and a former league MVP. As a member of the Minnesota Lynx she’d won four WNBA titles. That was on top of two national championships at the University of Connecticut and a gold medal playing for Team USA in the 2016 Olympic Games.

In 1998 Mr. Irons, at age 16, had been tried as an adult and found guilty of burglary and the nonfatal shooting of a man in his home. He had always professed his innocence, and only shaky evidence tied him to the scene. His conviction was overturned when it was shown that his defense had not been given access to fingerprint evidence that could have helped his case. After 22 years, Mr. Irons was finally free.

“Until Maya Moore got involved, [Mr. Irons] just really didn’t have the resources to either hire counsel or hire investigators,” says his attorney, Kent Gipson. “It’s big to sacrifice a year of your career in your prime to do that.”

Professional athletes regularly make sizable gifts to charities, establish charitable foundations, and in general use their fame to promote various causes. And many of them aren’t household names. This week Patty Mills, a guard on the San Antonio Spurs basketball team, said he would donate all the money he earns when the NBA season resumes – just over $1 million – to three charities in his native Australia that combat racism. He’s decided to play, he says, because “I don’t want to leave any money on the table that could be going directly to Black communities.”  

Ms. Moore has said she will take the coming WNBA season off as well. Some speculate that she’ll retire altogether. Her criminal justice work has struck a chord with her, nurtured by her deep Christian faith, which has guided her since childhood.

“It hit me so hard when I was in middle school that God is my father, and He is my identity,” Ms. Moore said in a 2019 interview. “He is what matters most about who I am.”

Ms. Moore uses a sports metaphor to explain her commitment. 

“People don’t want to watch a fixed game,” she said in an interview after Mr. Irons’ release. “They want to watch a fair game, and so that’s all we’re asking for, in our justice system – let’s be fair.” 

For Ms. Moore, a new playing field may now beckon, one not filled with money and fame but with doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly.