Baltimore

The day of Freddie Grey’s death in April of 2015 I was working at a local weekly newspaper in Northern Virginia. Upon coming home one night I turned on my TV, ready to settle in and make dinner. The images scrolling across CNN were of a CVS gone up in flames, angry protesters and unrest. I had read about the tragedy the day before, but now there were mass demostrations. Video shooting down from helicopters and glossy graphics framed what I felt like was history in the making. I grabbed my keys and a camera and took off for the intersection where everybody seemed to be congregated.

Upon arriving in Baltimore I saw boarded front doors, excitable locals and journalists from all over world. Within my first few hours of arriving the sun dipped on the horizon and people congregated at the corner of W North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue. In the middle of the intersection Geraldo was set to go live on Fox News. Instead as you can see below Kwame Rose, a young protester at the time, unleashed his quick verbal breakdown of his thoughts on much of the coverage he was seeing from the media surrounding the events of the previous few days.

Some of this footage was used in the HBO documentary “Baltimore Rising” where Kwame was a main character. I went to Baltimore multiple days and nights and as the time went on I found there were fewer people who actually resided in Baltimore who were congregating and the corner had eventually become just an impromptu outdoor studio for news cameras mostly just reporting on statements from local politicians and talking about a curfew they were exempt from as members of the media.

Gallery of that night

Kwame Rose face-to-face with a Fox News camera, April 2015.