'A Cycle That Needs to Be Broken': A Fresno Activist Speaks Out

As Joshua Slack stood before a crowd of 3,000 people in front of Fresno's city hall, he had a strongly worded message for his audience.

“White supremacy has gone on far too long,” he said, in a May 31 speech posted to YouTube. “The pandemic of white supremacy has plagued our collective consciousness to the point where a Black body’s worth is nothing more than just a hashtag. … Black rage and anger is 100% justified.”

Slack had been living in Los Angeles but went home to stay with family in the nearby town of Lemoore when the coronavirus shelter-in-place orders were announced.

Then, the video of George Floyd's killing came out.

"The next day, the riots start to happen," said Slack. "I just felt this urge that like something in Fresno or something in the Central Valley just needed to be organized."

Slack, 24, first got involved with activism as a student at California State University, Fresno. There, he was president of Fresno State Black Students United. He studied theatre arts as part of the school's Black Theater Contingent and graduated in 2018.

He reached out to D’Aungillique Jackson, president of the Fresno State chapter of the NAACP and a close friend. While they were strategizing, they came across social media postings for planned protests. They started reaching out to the organizers to see how they could help and found that while many were people of color, none of them were Black.

"We were feeling a sense of just, frustration because the danger of labeling it as a Black Lives Matter march and something happens and like there's no Black people involved ... we would still be the ones that would get kind of like the bad rap."

They held a video meeting with the organizers and expressed their concerns, and the groups joined forces. Slack said there's a lot of frustration among folks in the Central Valley when it comes to injustice.

“[It's] very agricultural country,” said Slack. “Topics like Black Lives Matter or topics like racial injustice are really kind of pushed to the sideline … you don't talk about it.”

Slack pointed to the Fresno Police Department’s track record, including former police chief Jerry Dyer being sued multiple times for discrimination. The city paid $300,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit alleging Dyer sang the plantation song “shortnin’ bread” when referring to Black officers. The department has also been repeatedly sued by family members of people shot and killed by officers. Dyer was recently elected mayor of Fresno.

“Honestly, it's just such a bizarre, bizarre experience,” said Slack. “It feels like that we are literally in a police state at this point. I'm trying not to get too angry because this is such a dominating force and almost suffocating the life out of the minority groups out here.”

Slack said that the police presence in Fresno often feels suffocating — and is overlooked due to Fresno’s rural location. “You can't go anywhere or do anything without them there,” he said.

“They're continuously getting funding. Our tax dollars are going towards that. It's a cycle that needs to just be broken,” he added.

Slack and the other organizers of the Fresno protests have issued a set of demands, including firing racist police officers and establishing a council where Black and Latinx people have a say in hiring the next police chief.

Slack first noticed this absence of diversity when his family moved  to the Central Valley from Virginia when he was ten years old. His mother was with the Coast Guard and was stationed in Lemoore, where only 5% of the population is Black. Slack said it was a shock to go from a place where there were many other people who looked like him, to a place where he was one of the few Black children in his school — and the only one with an afro or braids. The curriculum was different, too.

“We had learned so much about Black history growing up there and when I came out to Lemoore, it felt almost as if that had been watered down," he said. "I was losing a sense of my identity.”

His father, a film professor, noticed his son struggling with his identity and began showing him movies that reflected the Black experience, culture and history. Slack recalls one of the first was Alex Haley's classic miniseries, "Roots." “I was kind of being exposed to a different side of history than I was being taught. A more graphic version of it,” said Slack.

Then came Spike Lee’s biopic, "Malcolm X," starring Denzel Washington — another chapter in history Slack didn’t learn about in school. Knowing he was interested in acting, Slack's father also showed him the 1963 film "Lilies of the Field," starring Sydney Poitier, as an example of a Black actor of historical significance. He said those three films hold special significance for him, and watching films with his dad inspired him to become an actor and photographer.

When shelter-in-place restrictions ease, Slack said he plans to return to acting school in Los Angeles. He said he wants to be part of the progress he’s seeing in the theater and on film, and play Black characters that are three-dimensional.

“I would really like to be part of something that's inspiring in a way that doesn't require Black trauma to be seen as powerful,” Slack said. “The struggle of being a Black actor is that that is a lot of what we get.”