Shouts of “Justice for Nolan Wells” and “Black boys deserve to grow old” echoed across the Atlanta University Center campus Thursday evening as hundreds of students marched to show their solidarity with Wells and his family.
The march was organized by the Spelman and Clark Atlanta chapters of the NAACP after a grand jury in Jackson County, Mississippi, last week declined to press criminal charges in the case of Wells’ suspicious death.
Before the march began, a student leader prayed over the crowd and asked God to guide and protect Wells’ family in their pursuit of justice as they push back against authorities who say there was no wrongdoing that led to his death. The Spelman organizers specifically called out white supremacy in the criminal justice system for preventing Wells’ family from receiving accountability inr his death.
Wells was an 18-year-old college student who went missing over Fourth of July weekend after taking a boat trip to Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A park ranger found his body floating along the shoreline two days later.
Since then, questions surrounding the circumstances of his death have attracted widespread media attention and inspired protests across the country. On Wednesday, organizers called for a social media blackout and asked users to change their profile pictures in support for Wells and to force his name to remain in the news cycle.
Morehouse College seniors Santiago and Uchenna, both 22, told Capital B Atlanta they heard about the Thursday march on Fizz, a social media app for college students. Each declined to give their last name.
They said they believe speaking up for Wells is part of their duty as HBCU students.
“It’s part of the matriculation process,” Santiago said. “This is important to me from a humanitarian perspective, obviously, but also because I’m a Black man in America, and this is something that can affect potentially more Black men if we don’t bring attention to this right now.”
Students marched from the Robert W. Woodruff Library on Clark Atlanta’s campus to the King Chapel on Morehouse’s campus carrying signs demanding the investigation be reopened.
Both the independent medical examiner hired by Wells’ family and the chief medical examiner for the state of Mississippi found his cause of death to be undetermined. The grand jury decided that drowning was Wells’ cause of death and excluded other possibilities.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Wells’ parents, Elmore and Christine Wonsley, told reporters the grand jury report has left them with more questions than answers in their son’s death.
Crump specifically pointed to the lack of explanation for bruising on the back of Wells’ head caused by an injury that the family believes occurred on the day of his disappearance.
Organizers with bullhorns led the crowd in chants of “He didn’t drown” and “No water in his lungs.”
“It’s ridiculous, like, how do you get that and the autopsy report says there’s no water in his lungs? It’s like they’re hiding stuff,” said Besiyah, a sophomore biology major at Clark Atlanta. She declined to give her last name.
The 19-year-old told Capital B Atlanta she felt frustrated when she learned there wouldn’t be any criminal charges filed. When she and her friends heard about the march on social media, they knew they wanted to participate.
“It’s time to get angry,” Besiyah said “It’s time to stop sitting around and letting things pass by knowing that you could be part of making a big difference.”
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