OU Students Create Homemade Signs To Show Their Support of the Black Lives Matter Movement

Story and Photos by Eleanor Bishop

A hand painted flag on Mill Street quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous Letter From Birmingham Jail.

In early June, as footage of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin swept across the internet and ignited protests against police brutality around the world, Ohio University junior Tyra Huxley was one of many Athenians who felt a call to action.

“Being in Athens, there weren’t a whole lot of protest flags hung up in the first couple weeks of it happening, Huxley says. “We had to do something to put our mark on it and help in whatever way we [could].” She and her roommate Wil Hoffman made a sign out of a bedsheet that reads, “I Can’t Breathe ‘Justice For All’ #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd” and hung it over their apartment’s third-floor balcony.

Six months later, Huxley and Hoffman’s flag remains up and is one of many homemade signs adorning houses and apartments near campus that show support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We did it just to raise more awareness and make people realize that Athenians care and we’re empathetic to the situations and we believe Black lives matter,” she says. “White silence is violence.”

Huxley and Hoffman’s bedsheet flag has received a lot of attention. “We’ve had some people come by and take pictures of it,” Huxley says.

Flags in support of the Black Lives Matter movement hang outside of River Park apartments.

Through cardboard, bedsheets, markers and paint, OU students continue to make their voices heard.

Megan Fitch and Mckenna Knisely, an OU fifth year and senior respectively, hung up their homemade cardboard sign in July. They used rainbow paint to represent their support for Black members of the LGBTQ community during Pride Month. When their original sign was destroyed by a rainstorm, they painted a new one. “We’re planning on keeping it up until it falls and then we’ll make another one,” Fitch said.