In response to the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by police officer Darren Wilson, people across the country have participated in peaceful protests in memory of the slain teenager. But Atlanta residents Londrelle Hall and Ray Mills took a different approach to honoring Brown’s life — one that required much physical endurance and would not have been possible without unfailing passion and perseverance. Hall and Mills successfully completed the “Run for Justice” from Atlanta to Ferguson by foot. The pair ran the entire 540 miles to their destination — the spot in Ferguson where Brown was gunned down, which has become an ever-evolving…
In response to the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by police officer Darren Wilson, people across the country have participated in peaceful protests in memory of the slain teenager.
But Atlanta residents Londrelle Hall and Ray Mills took a different approach to honoring Brown’s life — one that required much physical endurance and would not have been possible without unfailing passion and perseverance.
Hall and Mills successfully completed the “Run for Justice” from Atlanta to Ferguson by foot. The pair ran the entire 540 miles to their destination — the spot in Ferguson where Brown was gunned down, which has become an ever-evolving memorial site.
In a previous interview with The Huffington Post, Hall detailed the challenges of the journey — many of which went beyond the initial physical pain, testing his emotional state as well.
The journey, in Hall’s telling, was monumental — it started in the suburbs of Atlanta, took the men through the streets of some of America’s most deeply racially divided cities and ended at the site where Brown was killed.
In an effort to convey the intense flow of emotion they experienced upon completing the 540-mile Run For Justice, Hall and Mills have shared never-before-seen images with HuffPost that portray the moment they landed in Ferguson and marked the accomplishment of their impressive feat.
Hall told HuffPost about the meaning of the images and the moment they depicted:
The images effectively capture the raw emotion we felt upon our arrival in Ferguson.
We were greeted with so much love from the residents of Ferguson from the moment we arrived, we felt like family, like we had witnessed and endured all of what they went through the past three Months. We cried together as if the death of Michael Brown was the death of one of our closet family members.
It’s crazy how death can bring a community together, it has the ability to bring those who know nothing about each other together with hugs and tears. Death sometimes gives life to new beginnings, new friends [and] new memories.
To arrive in a city where there is so much tension and frustration that had been built up it’s very hard not [to] have an emotional reaction to everything that’s going on. We felt compelled to run over 500 Miles to the exact spot where he lost his life. We wanted to make sure he didn’t die in vein. We wanted to show the community the world still cared about Mike Brown.
Walking that last mile with the residents of Ferguson felt nothing like walking to the finish line, it was more like taking your last steps in life. The feeling was unexplainable, it was like walking through quicksand, my legs and mind couldn’t come to grips with knowing the end our our run would lead us to the exact spot of the end of his life.
Here are the images Hall shared with HuffPost:
Link:
The Men Who Ran 540 Miles From Atlanta To Ferguson Share Exclusive Photos Of Their Journey
