“Frankly, I protested because I don’t want to be the next hashtag.” Paris Henderson L’21 was one of four women who shared in a recent Charlotte Observer column their motivations for taking part in recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations across North Carolina.
An Elon University School of Law student who joined in a Black Lives Matter protest this spring reflected on her motivations for doing so in a Sunday opinion column in one of North Carolina’s largest daily newspapers.
Paris Henderson L’21 was among those highlighted in “Four NC women: Why I protested”, which appeared in the Sunday opinion section of the Charlotte Observer on June 14, 2020. She had taken part in demonstrations in Raleigh, N.C., on May 30.
“I believed that learning the law would help me somehow effectuate equity in communities of color,” Henderson writes. “That belief was naïve, though, because the truth is, no matter how many degrees I hold, or how smart I am, my black skin is still a threat to some, and I can be falsely accused and arrested on my own front porch like #HenryLouisGates.”
Henderson is pursuing her law degree and her MBA as part of Elon Law’s dual-degree program with Elon’s Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. She has professional experience in finance, human resources, personnel security and analytical functions.
Henderson’s reflections were the first to be published as an outcome of the forthcoming No More Masks Project, a name inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” poem and led by Elon Law Assistant Professor Tiffany Atkins.