This photo became an instant icon of race tensions
Calm, poised nurse arrested during Baton Rouge protest
Social media is exploding with reaction to a defining photograph of the protests in Louisiana over the shooting death of Alton Sterling in a struggle last Tuesday with two Baton Rouge, La., police officers.
The photo is of a young woman in a flowing dress near the city’s police headquarters, the instant before she is arrested by police.
The woman was held in detention for 24 hours.
“Have a feeling we are getting a glimpse of what will be in future history books,” tweets one admirer.
“Look at her posture!” another tweets. “She is balanced, powerful, upright and well grounded with both feet firmly planted on the earth.”
The officers in heavy riot gear appear to be reeling backward from her.
The photo was taken Saturday by Jonathan Bachman of Reuters.
It quickly went viral on social media, where she was identified as a 28-year-old nurse and mother of a 5-year-old boy.
“All that armour and weapons and they still look like they’re more afraid of her than she is of them,” another admirer on Twitter writes.
A second defining image of the turmoil was taken on Thursday night in Dallas after five police officers were killed by a sniper in that city.
That image, taken by Dallas Morning News photo intern Ting Shen, captures an officer sobbing as he and a medical worker comfort each other at Baylor University Hospital.
A Baton Rouge police spokesman, Sgt. Don Coppola, said the demonstrations have become more violent as protesters from other cities have arrived in Baton Rouge.
More than 180 people have been arrested at protests in Louisiana since the July 5 fatal shooting of Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, by two white Baton Rouge police officers.
Most of Sunday’s arrests took place near downtown Baton Rouge, where police in riot gear kept a group of protesters from walking onto state highway 110, thwarting a tactic activists have attempted around in the country in the aftermath of the killings of Sterling, and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
Authorities made more than160 arrests in Louisiana’s capital during a long, hot weekend of protests over killings by police, with only one injury reported among the ranks, this when an officer was hit by a projectile.
More than1,000 demonstrators left a Black Lives Matter rally in Memphis, Tenn., and occupied a Mississippi River bridge Sunday, temporarily halting traffic on Interstate 40. Hundreds walked onto Hwy. 264 in Portsmouth, Va., marooning motorists for hours.
Demonstrators failed to block highways in Atlanta and San Francisco in recent days.