He walked near the front of the march in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Saturday, a trail of hundreds of demonstrators behind him, raising a black-gloved fist in the air. His white Chicago Bulls shorts flopped past his knees and the gold block letters on his black T-shirt glistened.
"BLAK,” it read, an acronym for Black Lives Activists of Kenosha.
Just a week earlier, Jesse Franklin, who drives a delivery truck, had never been to a protest. He’d never marched in a rally, never chanted for justice, never had a large group of people waiting to hear what he would say.