"THIS has to be the start of change."
Those are the words of Lolly Nelson, a campaigner who has spent her life battling racism from her second day at primary school when she came home in tears and asked to go back into her mummy’s tummy and come out white.
Lolly was among campaigners who held a peaceful, socially distant protest outside Northallerton’s Town Hall on Monday evening to support the calls for change and Black Lives Matter.
Emma Davis of Northallerton Against Racism said: “Thank you to everyone who stood together. It was amazing to see how many came. I was so proud to stand with my daughter. And Lolly Nelson you were so confident, eloquent and your story was hard to hear but so moving.”
Lolly, 21, who was born and brought up in Northallerton has shared some of the shocking, heartbreaking stories of the racism she encountered growing up in the town.
She said: “I am mixed-race. My mother is white, and my father is black. On my second day of primary school, I came home crying to my mother because of the things I’d been called. I didn’t fully understand, but it was hurtful, and I understood enough because I asked if I could ‘go back in her tummy and come out white'.
“I was spat at, hit, pushed down stairs, had my hair cut, all because of the colour of my skin. It was relentless when speaking to the headteacher he didn’t do anything because it would look like 'he was taking the side of the black kid'.
“I thought secondary school might be better, but the insults only got worse. I was called n*****, black c***, monkey, p***. Everything you could think of and no one did anything. Not the school or the police.
“I hated everything about myself. My face, my hair. Everything. I wanted so badly to be anything but black, just so that I wouldn’t get harassed constantly. After school, things simmered down, but it didn’t stop. I would still have people giving me dirty looks and crossing the street to avoid me. I couldn’t go to work without having something said whether it be by a co-worker, or shouted through the window by a passerby. I cannot walk the street like everyone else, because something is always said.
“At the fair a group of men decided to attack myself and another person of colour. We were asked where we came from, what we’d done for this country, the usual s***. One claimed we did nothing but scrounge. It didn’t matter that I was born on this soil, I worked hard and had never been out of work, my grandparents, regardless of their race, had both been in the army and served this country.
“It didn’t matter to him because I was just a n*****. I was just a mark on his town and his country. It didn’t matter that I was a human being.
“For so long, I hated who I was. I despised everything about myself, just because I was black. It didn’t matter how hard my family and friends tried to assure me how beautiful I was. All I saw in the mirror was the very same thing that these racists did; I was an ugly mark.
“That’s what I used to think, but I’ve swiftly come to realise that it doesn’t matter what other people think. It doesn’t matter how I am perceived, because my skin is beautiful. There is a long, dark history attached to it, but I’m proud of my skin and who I am.
“That is why this movement is necessary. Because this racism is something that is prevalent everywhere, even in our little town. That is why the protest outside the Town Hall was so important, it was peaceful and people were socially distant.
“When you grow up and nobody wants to listen or care it was lovely to see the support and the care and we proved a point. I can’t force people to donate, or sign petitions, or just talk to others about what is going on, but I hope that my personal experiences can help people realise that this isn’t a small issue.
“It’s not an isolated incident. People are dying. People are being tormented incessantly. It nearly claimed my life, and it will claim others. Be kind. Be considerate. Be a good person.”
Northallerton Against Racism has set up a facebook page.
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