NC high school football star makes passionate speech at George Floyd rally Tuesday
Last Wednesday, two days after he saw videos of a Minnesota police officer putting his knee onto the back of George Floyd’s neck, Power Echols was tagged in a social media post from a friend.
His friend had posted another video. Echols said it “was of a young woman being beaten by the police like she was man.”
Echols, a rising senior at Vance High School and the best defensive high school football player in North Carolina, felt compelled to act.
He called some friends, and they called some friends. Pretty soon, they had a plan — and a group. The 31 high school kids, all 17 or 18 years old, launched ReBirth this week.
Echols said the group wanted to attend some of the Floyd protests going on in Charlotte. He said they also wanted to help instill old-school values in the younger black generation. They plan to start slowly, with Zoom meetings, and hope to grow to in-person meetings and develop an action plan, which may include speaking engagements and peaceful group rallies.
“We’re trying to do our part to change the lives of future generations of black people in America,” Echols said. “We want to spark change. We want a unification of our people and to look at our brothers and sisters as kin, instead of strangers, and to teach our young black men to be men and how to take care of our black sisters and be accountable.”
For the past two seasons, Echols has won the N.C. Associated Press defensive player of the year award and the Charlotte Observer defensive player of the year.
In December, he led Vance to its first N.C. 4A state football championship and was MVP. He finished his junior season with 156 tackles and 14 sacks.
In January, he committed to play football for Mack Brown at North Carolina.
He is, literally, the big man on Vance’s campus.
Now he’s a big man with a cause.
On Tuesday, Echols spoke for nearly five minutes in front of a huge crowd at the Government Center. He attended a Floyd rally organized by the NAACP and Kidz Fed Up, another youth group.
“I wasn’t nervous,” Echols said. “Well I was a little, but I treated it like a football game.”
Wearing all black, Echols started slowly and quickly got the crowd’s attention.
“Metaphorically speaking,” he said on stage, “we as teenagers are sick and tired of being sick and tired. (Actor) Will Smith alluded to the fact that police brutality and racism isn’t new. That, in his words, ‘It’s just being filmed.’
“We have a calling on our lives. We were born (at a) specific time ... to be the generation of unification. ... We will make sure that generations after us won’t ever have to go through the same things we have in 2020. We must not allow history to keep repeat itself.”
A few hours later, back at home, Echols said the speech only gave him confidence to do more.
“Today was like first big step,” he said. “It’s just a beginning. Our group is barely a week old.”
