On the morning of April 12, 2015, at about 8:48 am, a 25-year-old Black man named Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. allegedly made eye contact with a police officer at the corner of North and Mount in Baltimore, where he was walking with his friends Brandon Ross and Davonte Roary looking for breakfast from a carryout. Gray and Roary both started running, and three bicycle cops — Lt. Brian Rice, who first spotted Gray, Garrett Miller and Edward Nero — pursued him in a chase a judge later deemed constitutional because of that eye contact and the fact that West Baltimore is considered a “high crime area.”
The cops caught Gray at Baker and Mount and pushed him down by his face while twisting his legs behind him. Ross, who had not run, caught up with Gray and the bike cops and began to record the event. Kevin Moore, who lived in the Gilmor Homes public housing project, heard Gray’s screams and ran out to film as the officers carried Gray, crying out in pain and put him headfirst into the back of the police van.
The van drove a block and stopped again. Gray was removed and, once again, slid in headfirst, handcuffed. No one hooked his seatbelt. The van would stop four more times, but Gray would never see the outside world again.
Gray’s spine was severed and he was not conscious when they removed him from the van and put him in the hospital, where he remained for a week before dying on April 19 of the injuries inflicted in police custody. He was not the first person in recent years to be killed by the Baltimore police, who killed Anthony Anderson in 2012 and Tyrone West in 2013. West’s sister, Tawanda Jones, had been organizing around her brother’s death for years, and that movement converged with the national Black Lives Matter movement, which had exploded in Baltimore in November and December 2014 after prosecutors failed to charge Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson.
This situation made Gray’s death different. Protests began, almost immediately and organically, even before Gray died, straight out of Gilmor Homes, and they continued to grow, drawing thousands into the streets for nearly the next two weeks, the totality of which has been called the Baltimore Uprising.
In the 10 years since Baltimore police officers killed Gray, roughly 3,100 people — mainly Black men — have been murdered in Baltimore; more than twice that many have suffered fatal overdoses; one mayor, one state’s attorney and one police commissioner have been convicted on federal charges; more than 15 police officers have been implicated in the Gun Trace Task Force RICO case, where officers conspired to illegally detain and rob Baltimore residents; more than $70 million has been paid out in settlements relating to police misconduct; the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) budget has increased by nearly $150 million; BPD has shot at least 59 people; Adnan Syed, whose case at the time of Gray’s death was a national obsession, saw the charges against him dropped and then reinstated; more than 130 units in six buildings at Gilmor Homes, where Gray was arrested, have been vacated, while Perkins Homes and Poe Homes, other public housing projects, have been either demolished or boarded up; none of the officers who killed Gray were convicted and no one has ever been held accountable for his death; and Gray never got a chance to grow or mature past 25, and his family and friends have missed not only the 10 birthdays he never got to experience, but every day in between.
The protests, in retrospect, mark the halfway point in a decade of mass protest that could be said to have begun with Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and ended with the mass George Floyd/Breonna Taylor protests of 2020, but could also have begun with the Tea Party in 2009 and ended with the right-wing assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which we saw that perhaps the right has out-organized us, to disastrous consequence.
In order to try to fathom not only what happened in 2015, but also to get a sense of where we are now, I began to seek out people who were involved, in one way or another, with the uprising. But there are thousands of other versions of this story. Because it was truly a mass movement. This is a corner of it.
The Beginning
Duane “Shorty” Davis, organizer: I did Occupy Baltimore because I wanted Black people to be represented in that struggle, in that fight. So, I learned how to work with Hispanic, Black, Indian people because we all oppressed. So, you find the common denominator and you work with that. Freddie Gray was something that just, like, kicked it off, because we did the Trayvon Martin, we did the Mike Brown, we did the protest for all the other cities, and then when they hit home, it was just like a firecracker just blew up.
Davon Neverdon, “PFK Boom,” organizer, 300 Gangstas: Organized confusion … Gilmor Homes were the only people that was organized at that time, when that boy hit the ground. Gilmor Homes knew what they wanted to do. They just needed the people to help them do it. Marching, organizing, beating down doors, hitting the streets for Gilmor Homes, and they set the tempo. I asked her, before I did anything, Freddie Gray’s mother, asked her, what did she want done? She said she wanted justice for her son, and I said we could try to do that.
Jenny Egan, co-founder, Baltimore Action Legal Team (BALT): I remember leaving work, and I knew he was in the hospital, and just driving over there with another public defender friend, because we wanted to lay a flower and, like, wish him the best. And it’s when I just stumbled upon one of those first protests. Yeah, that’s what I want people to remember, is that it was organic, and that it was all like word of mouth and people talking to each other. It was Freddie’s neighbors who stood up, and that the uprising didn’t start on the 21st, it started on the 17th, when he was still in the hospital, that the neighborhood and the people who knew Freddie and knew his mom and knew that they weren’t perfect people and knew that they weren’t going to make the most PR-ready campaign, who stood up and said, “No, we’re not going to take this anymore,” and that their neighbors and their friends and the people of Baltimore stood with Sandtown [neighborhood in West Baltimore, where Gilmor Homes is located] and with those neighbors, and that that power is still, yeah, it’s still being built, and it’s still real, and it’s still the thing that’s going to push us [toward] the better world.
Angela, Baltimore Bloc: This was probably this Saturday while Freddie Gray was still in the hospital before he died. And we went out there. We just left Coppin [State University, where Bloc was meeting], and we went out to Gilmor. And I just remember this incredible number of people out on the street and I remember being really blown away by the organicness of it, that the neighborhood had organized itself into this really huge action that went on all day.
Payam, Baltimore Bloc: People didn’t think Freddie was gonna die, you know. So it wasn’t like, you know, it wasn’t so heated. It was hot, but there was still optimism that he’d recover. “We just want all these officers accountable” type shit.
D. Watkins, writer: Even though I didn’t have a personal relationship with Freddie Gray, I didn’t know Freddie Gray, I knew people that knew Freddie Gray, so everything just felt more intense, and I just found myself following what was happening with him, and is he going to make it out of the hospital or not, and is he going to survive or not?… There was a narrative that was going on in America, and then it just knocked on our front door, and I just remember that it just felt different.
Angela: I was really stunned when we got out there. It was like every person who lived in the neighborhood was out there. And it was, the mood was so optimistic on that day, and I think he died the next day, actually. But the mood was so resolute and optimistic.
D. Watkins: Like, what do we do in this situation? What do we do? And the only thing that seemed like it made sense was gather. So if I wasn’t gathering with people that was directly connected to what happened, then I was gathering with my own family and my own friends. It was a way of dealing with the grief before he even died.
The Death of Freddie Gray
Freddie Gray died in the hospital on Sunday, April 19. Tawanda Jones, who lost her brother Tyrone West to police violence on July 18, 2013, and had been protesting the police every Wednesday since then, was devastated to hear about another man killed by police in her city.
Tawanda Jones, organizer and sister of Tyrone West: It was hurtful, because that was the reason why I was standing out there [protesting every week], because I didn’t want it to happen. And I kept saying at previous West Wednesdays that we didn’t want to be another Ferguson, because before that, it was Michael Brown. And I’m like, if Baltimore City don’t hold these killer cops accountable, then we’re heading that way. So when the reality hit and it happened, I had a range of emotions, of sadness, of disbelief. It was just so much at one time.
Police detained the first two of many protesters on April 21, during the uprising at the Western District police station, both of whom were filming. Over the course of the coming week, they would arrest and detain hundreds more and continue with a pattern and practice of targeting photographers.
Angela: We went out there every single day for a week after that. We just kept going back every day. I was leaving work and going immediately, like, still in my work clothes, just driving straight from work to Gilmor Homes and getting out of the car and walking into whatever was going on protesting at the Western District.
Juan Grant, neighbor and friend of Freddie Gray, was filmed speaking into a megaphone. “Do not allow them to put you in a cell. Take you away from your family. They already took Fred from us. That’s why we’re out here. So do not allow them to take you away from your family at no time. We’re gonna stand out here. We’re gonna scream and shout. They gonna hear us loud. We love you, Fred. We love Fred. The whole family, the whole community. Once again, I’m proud of y’all and I love you. Every single color out in this motherfucker. This not about racism. It’s the police that’s racist. Not us. We are united and we showing them that. So once again I love y’all and I’m gone.”
Payam: But [officials went to] everybody in Gilmor like, “Look, y’all are the leaders. Y’all gotta calm everybody down,” like, type shit where they weren’t hearing that. They listened, but they were like, “No, we’re not doing that shit.”
Robert “Meech” Tucker was filmed on the barricade in front of the Western District giving a speech. “Black Power, Black Power! Listen yo, listen. All that gang shit, all that reds and that blue shit, that shit out the window right now. Feel me. We going at them.” He gestured at the police officers gathered behind him. “They our target, yo, we not each other’s target no more.”
“These young men are incredibly angry,” said Miguel Marquez, live on CNN as Shaun Young approached and put his hand around the mic.
“You can’t keep doing this shit to people,” Young said into the mic. “Motherfuckers ain’t gonna take it.” Marquez tried to take the microphone back. “Fuck him, fuck you, fuck that,” Young yelled. “Fuck that, straight up. Fuck CNN. We here. Straight up. Straight up.”
Shaun Young, photographer: Looking back, in that moment, I see this guy who was just frustrated.… We as a people weren’t going to stand for just blatantly being killed by the police.
Targeting the Documenters
Shorty: We started a march down Gilmor Homes, and it was only with a few people.… By the time we got to Camden Yards, we pulled everybody from every community. They joined in. The kids joined in. It was like a magnet, and people were drawn to it.
A young man named Allen Bullock was filmed smashing the window of a police car and dancing on top of it. Boston Red Sox fans at bars surrounding Camden Yards yelled racial slurs at protesters. A general melee broke out that ended with a number of broken windows and a tense standoff with police. Detective Daniel Hersl, who at the time was the subject of numerous brutality complaints, was filmed among the riot police.
In a photograph by J.M. Giordano, Shaun Young stands between a line of riot cops and a line of protesters, his arms outstretched, his eyes wide.
Shaun Young: When we were at the convention center, the idea behind it initially was not to [say], “Hey guys, let’s go down here and fight some police.”… So in that moment, I understood that again, it would have been more impactful to me, for me to use whatever influence that I had to say, “Hey guys, like, this right now is not the way to go,” because it just wasn’t.
Later that night, police took revenge at Gilmor Homes as hundreds of cops in riot gear faced down 20 or 30 protesters and a few members of the press. In another video, from after midnight, a swarm of officers attacked City Paper photojournalist J.M. Giordano, pummeling him with clubs as they dragged him away, and the filmer — me — screamed: “He’s a photographer. He’s a photographer. He’s press.”
Giordano got the shot they didn’t want him to get as they dragged him off: One officer holding down a young Black man who screamed as another raised a billy club above his head to beat him.
They arrested Sait Serkan Gurbuz, a photographer with Reuters.
The Uprising Comes to the Schools
April 27 was the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, but it was also, allegedly, the day high school students had planned a “purge” — a day where they would follow no laws. There has never been good evidence of the purge.
Payam: There was supposed to be no protest that day. Even his friends were like … [his] family said chill out today, and that’s why I didn’t take the purge stuff seriously. I heard it at work, and I’m like, that’s some fake shit, like, nobody’s heard about this, we don’t know where it came from.
Schools were dismissed early and public transit was closed. When students from Frederick Douglass and other schools approached Mondawmin Mall, they were confronted by a line of riot cops.
MTA has repeatedly refused to release its video of what happened that day and has never revealed who called for the shutdown of public transit.
Desiree Thaniel, artist, City College alumna, Morgan State Student: We had a political group at my high school and they organized a protest at our school … to pay our respect, to show our teachers that this is serious because you know how in school, a lot of teachers and professors like to just kind of pretend everything is all good. They don’t necessarily want to talk about it. And so, there was their chance to really force people to have a conversation. And we organized a walkout because of that. So, they made sure to tell everyone at a certain time that, you know, to wear all black, and during class, we’re all just gonna walk out. And so, we had this giant protest in the halls with yelling chants and forcing people to see us all come out, like, the more students that saw us, more students just joined us, and it turned into this whole giant parade.
Students from around the city had been hassled by police for years and supported the protests. In a photograph by Patrick Semansky, five officers in riot gear watch as a sixth throws a rock at schoolchildren, who began to lob rocks and bricks at police in a rolling battle that made its way down the street.
Jenny Egan: Police start riots, right, by showing up and beating people and then having them have to respond. I think that I thought the violence might be worse than it was, the police violence, in those moments, and yet I’m still shocked that we have videos and photos of police throwing rocks at children. We have their faces, we have their badge numbers, and none of those people were ever disciplined. It was a fascinating thing to see them be told, “Hey, if anyone critiques your job, you do get to beat them up and throw rocks and cause violence.”
The running battle between heavily armed and armored cops and kids in school uniforms led down to Pennsylvania Avenue, which was complete chaos. The CVS was set on fire.
Desiree Thaniel: I’m all down for peaceful protesting and everything, but I don’t necessarily think that they’re going to see us or hear us if we’re always just calm, quiet, cute about it. When that riot happened was the first time, maybe not the first point… that I really recognize, like, I’m not the only one that’s mad about it. You know, it made me feel really seen and made me feel really supported, even though it wasn’t about me.
Payam: The uprising was Frederick Douglass High School students, you know, people around Penn North … they weren’t organizers, they weren’t activists. That was an organic uprising, and then everybody just demonized that. Really, the media demonized it successfully, when up until that point, you’d had 10 days of straight, for the most part, peaceful protests. But after that, they just changed the whole narrative around.
PFK Boom: That’s the day that I was prepared to die. Smoke was everywhere. I didn’t think I was gonna make it through the day. I didn’t. I didn’t think one of my men was going to make it past the third day because it was so reactionary and everybody wanted a finger to point.
Video: PFK Boom is talking with Miguel Marquez from CNN. “What you’re getting an example of is what’s really inside of everybody for about 20 years,” Boom says. Greg Butler, wearing a gas mask and a red and gray shirt, punctures a fire hose amidst the chaos of the riot.
Greg Butler was a former basketball player at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute who had a scholarship to play ball in Florida, but because of a quirk in the way Baltimore City calculated GPAs, his average was just below the threshold, because of honors classes he had taken. If he had been able to accept the scholarship, he would not have been in Baltimore that day.
Greg Butler, educator: When I was 21, I was frustrated with the world. I described my city as the world, because that was my experience, and I was uncomfortable with challenging myself in a real way. The 20-, 21-year-old mind that I was in, I wouldn’t have been looking to burn down a CVS. We’d have burned down courthouses. We would have went big, right? I had that direction. I just didn’t have the power to tell everybody, “Come on, let’s go this way.” So, it scares me to know what I would have done in that moment, because I had no fear. Fear was introduced to me later about how these people would move the finish line, how the law is what they say it is, how there’s no recourse for abusing the law for those who have the power to wield it. I couldn’t appreciate that at 21 years old. I did enough to be the person I wanted to be, but if I could take it back, if I could take it back, I wouldn’t do anything different. If I was in that moment with another chance, I probably would have done a lot more violent.
Payam: One of the things I failed to do was like, support these kids. More like, put them at the forefront more for what they had to say, what they wanted to do. But it lasted so short, it was squashed so quickly, by the end of the night, and it didn’t come back, and there was just so much pushback. You know, people were vilified. I don’t know how to say it, but yeah, we didn’t honor them.
In federal court, bail bondsman Donald Stepp, a co-conspirator with the Baltimore Police Department’s corrupt Gun Trace Task Force, testified about receiving massive amounts of stolen pharmaceuticals from a member of the task force on April 27.
“It was during the riots of Freddie Gray that [BPD Sgt. Wayne Jenkins] called me again and told me to — woke me up and says, ‘I need you to open the garage door.’ So I went downstairs, opened the garage door. Same routine: pulls in, police-issued car, undercover car, popped his trunk. This time he come out with two trash bags, large trash bags … I go, ‘What’s this?’ And he says, ‘I just got people coming out of these pharmacies. I’ve got — I’ve got an entire pharmacy. I don’t even know what it is.’”
Then–Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake declared a curfew and the National Guard, as well as law enforcement from all over the region, rolled in the next morning. There was a cleanup at Penn North that day and tear gas and body armor at night.
Megan Kenny, Baltimore resident: There’s that cleanup day when there’s a picture that Devin Allen took that I’m standing and my back is to the line of police … because I figured that they would be less likely to run me over from the back, if they were trying to get to somebody. And so that’s when I was like, “Oh my God, this is that thing that people are saying that we should be doing, is being that physical barrier, because they’re less likely, not that they wouldn’t, but they’re less likely to steamroll me from the back.”
Shaun Young: I was proud of the fact of the number of people that came out and supported, you know, Black, white, everybody … it brought the city together, even though it had its negative moments. But I’ve never seen that many people come together and literally walking up just for weeks, protesting.… I built so many relationships from that, that, again, looking back, I understand the emotion behind it, and again, I’m proud that everybody rallied together the way that they did.
On May 1, then-State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby indicted six of the police officers involved in Gray’s death. The charges did much to end the uprising and contain it in the legal system.
Tawanda Jones: I remember being at work when Marilyn Mosby made the announcement that charges would be upon the officers that murdered Freddie Gray, and the speech she gave was phenomenal, I must say, and it literally was like a moment in time that I’ll never forget, and I was so appreciative of it and praying that we got accountability. But then it’s like, they dragged it off, and then it’s like justice delayed is justice denied.
Meech Tucker, who claimed gangs would unite against cops, was photographed dancing with a rabbi at the intersection of Penn North in a shirt reading, “I Bleed Baltimore.”
The Aftermath
None of the officers were convicted.
Baltimore police shot 44 bullets at Keith Davis Jr. on June 7, 2015, and Marilyn Mosby tried Davis a historic four times for the alleged murder of Kevin Jones, which he was ultimately exonerated of. Juan Grant, Gray’s friend and an early organizer of the uprising, was murdered in April 2019. Baltimore police shot and killed Donnell Rochester in 2022 as he fled police. He lived in Gilmor Homes and was 12 years old when the police chased and killed Gray.
Shorty: So, what are we doing different? We stopped protesting. We stopped protesting because it didn’t affect us directly. We don’t have no more Black leadership that’s working for change. We got Black leadership working for money. Big difference.
D. Watkins: So, we had a moment. I mean, we had a moment. And a lot of people, a lot of people have been awakened by that moment. A lot of people have benefited financially from that moment. A lot of people had their perspectives rocked and changed from that moment.
Megan Kenny: For me, that time was a profound, life-altering event. So, when I think back to that time, I think of both the pain but also the immense opportunity that the city had as a structure, because people were speaking out in droves and civil disruptions and actions, and it was pretty acute, the need for something to change. And so, I think of both the pain and of, you know, this is “something’s happening here,” like something momentous can happen from this horrific event of police killing a young man who really did nothing except run for his life.
Jenny Egan: I feel like out of the uprising came a number of not just organizations, but infrastructure that has gotten so much stronger over the last decade. Jail support just didn’t exist, right? We made it up in those weeks, and then there’s Court Watch and all of that sort of sharing of information, and people really engaging and understanding abolition. I think that “abolition” was a shocking, far left radical word at those protests. And now I think most of those organizations, who used to be afraid of that, even mainstream nonprofit organizations, have come to reckon with the depth and breadth of a police state and how much bigger our imaginations have to be. I don’t think any of that would have been possible without the uprising.… And so, some of the outing of the most abject corruption in BPD, even when it’s not related to violence and death, I think is directly attributable to the uprising, and it wouldn’t have happened without the uprising. I don’t think [former Police Commissioner Darryl] De Sousa would have been indicted. I don’t think cops would have gotten fired for stealing or for planting drugs. I think the [Gun Trace Task Force] would not have broken if the uprising had not predated it. I don’t think Wayne Jenkins would have ever gotten indicted if the uprising hadn’t happened.
Tawanda Jones: I’m so scared because the same feeling that I felt when we had the uprising, I’m like, please, I don’t want to see this. I don’t want this to happen. I’m starting to have the same feeling right now, and I’m sorry, because I have tears forming in my eyes, because this is a serious thing to me. I feel like, and I’m praying it don’t happen, but I feel like, soon, in the next two and a half years, we might be in the streets fighting for a civil rights law, just basic civil rights. They’re taking us back there, and it’s sad and disgusting.
Greg Butler: At 21, I was an activist. At 31, I am organizing, and I don’t shy away from that. In 2015 I knew, 10 years ago, that I was fighting men and I was not fighting the universe. There were men who waged war against us in 2015. We were not fighting God. We were not fighting the universe. We had every piece that we needed to push against that, and we did. And despite things not changing in a desired result, things have changed. I’m watching little Black kids be allowed to be little Black kids. That’s a blessing. It did not come through legislation, let’s be clear. It came through people pushing in whatever space they had.
PFK Boom: You’ll see a kid that’s going home to two parents best friends with a kid that’s going to a foster home, but they both understand, “We all we got, we all we need.” That’s why that slogan and that saying also has been able to come out of the uprising and still actually be focused, understood and meaning the Black suffrage-poor-all-white-ain’t-white, all-Black-ain’t-Black struggle that in Baltimore is just very unique.
Desiree Thaniel: Not only have I already not trusted the police, but it’s like, now I just straight up don’t like them anymore, and it’s also making it hard to, like, trust people around me. So that’s the thing that makes me sad, and it just makes me want to make sure that we are teaching the children how to be safe and how to know that their rights are worth fighting for, because after my mom’s generation is my generation, and after my generation is my children’s generation.
D. Watkins: I think it’s gone. I think there’s still a whole lot of good people out in the world doing the work. I think there’s a lot of people trying to advocate and trying to push for this change. But I truly feel like in this particular time, you know, the country has regressed in a lot of ways. I mean, look at the election, right? Look at what’s happening right now, and if Freddie Gray happened today — I truly believe that it won’t be the same kind of response when it happens.
Jenny Egan: When I think about it, 10 years on, I think in 2015 I really had a hope that [by 2022] when a police officer murdered Donnell Rochester in cold blood, and an investigation said this is prosecutable … that people would care, that people would know his name, and that something would be different. And my feeling right now is that the police killed more people last year in the United States, despite crime being dramatically lower than it was in 2015. Despite all of the changes in the United States, cops are still killing people.
Shorty: Freddie got killed, and they got money. And then after they got the money, and the money ran out, we still suffering the same Freddie Gray shit. We still getting killed by the police. We still got jump-out boys. We still got police. They can do what the fuck they want, and ain’t nobody doing nothing about it. We got a Black state’s attorney. We got a Black attorney general, and you still ain’t about to do Tawanda Jones right? So how the fuck we done did anything different? Yeah. So, we’re reminded of Freddie Gray, but we still got a Anthony Anderson, we still got a Maurice Donald Johnson, we still got a Tyrone West.
This article is a joint publication between Truthout and Baltimore Beat.
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