Anna: Ain't No Negativity Allowed

Peaceful Black Lives Matter protest sways town with ‘history as a haven for racism’

Black Lives Matter protesters march peacefully through Anna last Thursday evening. (Facebook)

By Ted Cox

A peaceful Black Lives Matter protest might be swaying residents of a small southern Illinois town that even the local newspaper acknowledges has a “history as a haven for racism.”

Jenna Gomez, an 18-year-old area resident, led a protest Thursday in Anna, a town of just under 5,000 people south of Carbondale. “My phone has actually not been quiet since the protest — people I don’t even know messaging me,” she said Monday. “The main response I’ve seen is people standing with us in support.”

As protests against police brutality and institutionalized racism have swept the nation since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police late last month, Gomez said she was driven to organize a march in Anna by “my morals, mostly, just standing for what I believe in and believing that we all love each other the same. It’s just the simplicity of seeing people how they are. I want to stand for that.”

A small-town protest might not seem as inherently dangerous as a protest in the Twin Cities or outside the White House in Washington, D.C., but in many ways this was just as fraught, as Anna has a history as a “sundown town,” where African Americans were supposedly not welcome after dark. The Southern Illinoisan acknowledged that “history as a haven for racism” in its story on the protest march. Anna is certainly not alone among Illinois towns in that regard, but Anna’s reputation persisted into the present day with locals suggesting the name stood for an acronym including an infamous racial slur: “Ain’t No (N’s) Allowed.”

Kathy Bryan, a member of the Anna City Council who also owns the local Kiki’s Coffeehouse, called that “an urban legend that we can’t get rid of from the past because of this simple acronym.” She said the town is perpetually working to “try to get rid of that stigma, because it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. People say that, and we can’t break out of the cycle of it, because it just keeps getting repeated.” She insisted, as a member of the council and a business owner, that “everyone’s welcome here.”

“I know there are a lot of people in Anna, especially young people and business owners, who really want that reputation to be changed,” said Bonnie Burton, owner of the Pack Rats Paradise Antique Mall in neighboring Cobden, who attended the protest march. “They live there. They feel that it’s not that way. Although they know it’s there, it’s not as prominent as people believe.

“It’s not a majority of people,” she added. “It’s a very small minority. I think they’re desperately clinging to — well, it’s power, I guess.”

Opposition was enough to be on public display on social media, however, even on a Facebook post by Anna Police Chief Bryan Watkins advising residents ahead of time of a “peaceful demonstration” set for Thursday, which drew some threatening comments, as well as some hand-wringing responses worrying about looting and “antifas.” Watkins stated: “The Police Department has taken measures to ensure the safety of its citizens and the people involved in the demonstration, as well as the protection of personal and business property. We ask anyone who attends this demonstration to do so in a professional and respectful manner.”

“There were so many rumors and so much conjecture,” Bryan said, including Facebook posts warning of violence and of people being bused in from both extremes.

“I was concerned about it getting a little violent,” Gomez said. “Surprisingly, it shocked us how few people were really putting their opinion out there against us.”

Also surprising, however, was the turnout in support of the protest march. Gomez said early in the week, “honestly, I thought anywhere from about 10 to maybe 30 to 40 people” would attend. “But as the days went on and it got more and more hype, I thought, ‘You might get a couple hundred people, maybe.’ And the turnout seemed right about 200 people, which is crazy. But we loved it.”

Burton said she went by people sitting in front of their houses and shaking their heads as she walked to the site of the protest, where others stood by in a group at a distance.

“Instantly, people had started to scream at us,” Gomez said. “And we jumped in front of our crowd and were like reminding them that we aren’t them.”

Gomez said it “very chilling,” at first. “To me, being 18 years old and seeing in my hometown people standing against us, it was very shaking, but a very powerful experience at the same time.” Still, they were determined to keep things peaceful if possible.

So were police. “When we got there and saw that they were shutting the anti-protesters down and not us, that’s when we realized they’re obviously going to care,” Gomez said. “That was shocking to see.”

Watkins later shared a post from Union County State’s Attorney Daniel Klingemann: “What people didn’t see was that those same law-enforcement officers didn’t just go outside and stand on those streets. A few hours before the start of everything, I had the privilege of being present while they discussed their plans for how to handle certain scenarios. Plans they had been working on for days.

“I am not going to go in to specific detail as that was their time and I was an invited guest,” Klingemann added. “What I will say is that during this meeting there were no negative statements made in regards to anyone. Whether they were discussing protestors, counter-protestors, or anyone else, they never said anything negative. They only discussed safety. How were they going to ensure the safety of EVERYONE involved, including themselves. They did not discuss treating anyone different from any other group expected to be there. They did not discuss extreme tactics. They made sure they were prepared. But prepared to keep the peace and guard the safety of all there.”

“The police themselves were amazing,” Burton said. As the march proceeded, there were only a couple of disturbances, she said, when police removed one counter-protestor who was threatening to become belligerent, then made sure another in a car moved along. “Pretty much that was it,” she said.

The protest and march went off peacefully. “The protest itself was very powerful. It was amazing,” Burton said. The young leaders seemed “very well organized” and “spoke very powerfully,” as did one pastor who “was quite emotional when he was speaking, about the church having failed people of color.”

“I thought it went very well,” Bryan said. “I personally liked seeing young people of all colors there to support each other.

“We just weren’t really sure how well it was going to go,” she added. “It kind of made me tear up when I saw so many people there, in Anna, for a Black Lives Matter protest.”

Marchers chanted slogans familiar from other protests like “No justice, no peace” and “I can’t breathe,” a reference to Floyd’s final words, but they also coined a new anagram for Anna: Ain’t No Negativity Allowed.

“People are loving it,” Burton said. “So now to have a replacement is pretty fun. I think it’s caught on. There’s a lot of momentum.”

“I love that,” Bryan said of the new acronym. “I thought for us this was a great way to say, ‘Hey, that’s not what we are.’ This is 2020. We’re going to act like 2020, not 1920.”

“I would love to see the community come together,” Gomez said. “I would love to see the entire nation come together and do something on a bigger scale. I want to see change. And I hope that ‘Ain’t No Negativity’ really sticks, rather than what Anna is said to stand for.”

Gomez and Burton both insisted many more people would have turned out in support if they hadn’t been worried about the potential for violence. Gomez said the fact that the protest went off peacefully “is what’s going to sway the general public.”

Gomez said, “I’m hoping to get to as many protests as I can — hopefully get my voice back and just continue to stand for what I believe in.” She added, “We will not be silent, and this won’t be the last time you see us.”

Bryan said she’s seen increased involvement in communities across the southern part of the state in the sort of political issues they don’t usually pay any mind, adding, “It’s good to see some of these bigger political matters actually touch us.”

Burton said older residents who took part in the march kept back from the main group and wore masks, out of concerns over COVID-19, but that many others would have attended otherwise. She added that she’s planning to attend a protest by car set for Carbondale on Friday, organized to be something of a funeral procession in Floyd’s memory.

“It’s such a profound thing that’s happening in this area. There are so many people who want to be part of it,” she said. “They really want to throw their support in. Even if they’ve never done anything like this before. This is a transformational time, and I think you can really feel it.”