Ten years ago, protests erupted in Charlotte following the fatal police shooting of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott.
The unrest began just hours after police shot Scott in the parking lot of his University City apartment complex on Sept. 20, 2016. Police said, and an investigation later confirmed, that Scott was armed and ignored repeated commands to drop his gun.
Scott’s death set off days of protests, including two nights of unrest and violence. Protesters threw rocks as police fired tear gas. Shop windows were smashed and businesses were looted. Twenty-six-year-old Justin Carr was fatally shot during the demonstrations.
We wanted to reflect on how that moment changed Charlotte and the lives of people who lived through it. So we called up Braxton Winston, who joined the protests and, a year later, won an at-large seat on the Charlotte City Council.
He spoke with WFAE's Nick de la Canal.
Nick de la Canal: What do you remember most vividly from those protests 10 years ago?
Braxton Winston: What I remember most vividly, starting the first night on September 20, 2016 — I was there on Old Concord Road when the active investigation was happening and listening to neighbors who had seen Keith Lamont Scott sitting in that parking space virtually every day, waiting for his kids to get off the school bus.
I heard the community contextualizing things we were experiencing in America. This was a few years after Trayvon Martin and Ferguson. That year, there were several high-profile killings of Black men by police officers, so tensions were really high.
And really, that night, the Charlotte community — particularly the young Black Charlotte community — decided it was time for our government to have some accountability for what was going on.
De la Canal: Can I ask, who were you in your life at that point? Did you consider yourself a civically engaged person?
Winston: No, I was not a civically engaged person. Well, I was civically engaged within my circles, but at that time I was a father, a stagehand, a coach, a concerned citizen.
De la Canal: I think I had read that was your first protest.
Winston: Absolutely.
De la Canal: So then, what was it like to be in those protests and see the response from protesters and police? You also witnessed the shooting of Justin Carr, who was hit by a stray bullet from another person at the protest. How did all of that affect you?
Winston: The first night was very traumatic. It was the most violent, painful thing I’ve ever been part of. I felt like CMPD brutalized us that night.
I remember it got particularly violent with this barrage of explosives and tear gas and rubber bullets. And I made a commitment that I would stay out there as long as the community wanted to be out there.
Every night from that first night, the community left on their own terms, when we were ready and until we felt like we were heard.
De la Canal: So, after the protests, you stayed involved. You became an activist and then won an at-large seat on the City Council. Why, in your mind, was running for office the thing to do?
Winston: I was arrested on Sept. 26 outside of Bank of America Stadium. And while I was sitting in the jail cell, it was really — that week was my first time to just kind of sit and think.
I thought about how I needed to be more intentional and less insurgent. There were three ways that I thought I could go. I could continue the citizen journalism route. I could go the nonprofit route — I guess, quote-unquote, "activism" — and the government route.
Initially, I wanted to push others into the government leadership realm. I really wasn’t thinking about myself. But after months of continuing to show up, it became clear that if not me, then who? If not now, then when?
De la Canal: At that time, you were calling for changes around policing and criminal justice, but you also talked about affordable housing, transportation, wages and segregation. How did you see those problems as connected to what happened around the Keith Scott shooting?
Winston: It was about those conversations that we were having on the streets and online. I was out on the street every night for hours, and a lot of it was just question-asking.
And when I started to look at that question of, “Why does this keep happening?” it led to other questions like, “Why does it keep happening here? Why does it happen over and over again in communities that are Black and brown and have lower household income levels? Why doesn’t this happen in other communities where people are smoking weed too, but aren’t seen as dangerous?”
So I kept asking questions, trying to get to solutions that can be put into policies and laws that you can change.
De la Canal: And so you were elected to City Council, and you served for six years. Do you feel like you were able to change the city in a meaningful way?
Winston: There were definitely some meaningful changes.
I think ultimately we were able to change the way the city is developed. The comprehensive plan and Unified Development Ordinance were a big step in laying the policy framework to desegregate a city, to erase the lines of the crescent and the wedge. But that’s going to take generations.
One of the reasons why I did not run for reelection, to be completely honest, is that I perceived a lack of political willingness amongst my colleagues to continue that big, substantive change.
So somewhere between passing the new comprehensive vision plan and COVID and George Floyd, I perceived that there was a loss of political will to continue the big, substantial systemic changes that are necessary. And I think you’re seeing that in today’s local political discourse.
De la Canal: So does that mean that your belief has changed about whether systems can be changed from the inside?
Winston: No, absolutely not. They can be. They can be if you put people up there with the political will.
We had a short window here in Charlotte where there was political will to work toward systemic, institutional change, and we did do some of that. But it can’t be a moment. It can’t be a short window.
In order to undo decades and centuries of inequities, you have to have a long and patient commitment to that.
I don’t know if we have that right now.
De la Canal: So government systems and policies aside, how do you think the shooting of Keith Scott and everything that followed changed you personally?
Winston: That day was a fork in the road, and my life has been affected every day by that.
Unfortunately, Mr. Scott’s death has been really the most impactful single event of my life. And I’m grateful that my community will allow me to continue to work on his behalf in so many different rooms and at so many different tables.
De la Canal: That’s Braxton Winston, a former Charlotte City Council member who is now president of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO. Thank you so much.
Winston: Thank you, Nick.
