The smell of Lysol and urine filled the air as Adam Nelson waited to be booked at the Shelby County Jail. Held all night, he could not sleep.
For 21 hours he sat in a series of hard plastic chairs, pelted by bright fluorescent light, forced to change chairs every few hours. As a seasoned civil rights activist, he remained resolute: This was the price, he determined, for exercising his First Amendment rights.
Nelson, a volunteer for the advocacy group Free the 901, was arrested along with two others at a ‘No Kings’ rally earlier this year. His arrest came, he said, after he tried to protect others from abusive police actions.
“I could see all the police and … their advances and aggression,’’ Nelson said. “And then (I) saw people being taken, hurt, or maced. And it was at that point I started to act as a support.’’
Just what happened on that sunny afternoon in Downtown Memphis on March 28 remains in dispute. Numbers of witnesses contend that Memphis Police Department officers acted recklessly and without provocation, busting up the march just as it was winding down. Protesters were sprayed with a chemical agent. Others were tackled and taken to the pavement. Some were detained and released; others were taken to jail.
MPD later suspended four officers with pay. An internal investigation remains ongoing.
Nelson was arrested along with protesters David Rahaim and Reuben Burch and charged with obstructing a highway, disorderly conduct, and failing to obey a traffic officer. All charges against the three were later dismissed. Following the dismissal, Nelson agreed to speak with the Institute for Public Service Reporting. Over the course of 80 minutes, he dissected the march and its breakup by police, the conditions he witnessed inside the county jail at 201 Poplar, and his views on civil rights and activism in a polarized age.
Nelson’s role was supposed to have been simple: He was assigned to distribute handbills and water at the No Kings rally at Robert R. Church Park across from FedEx Forum. Then the march started.
Marchers headed west down Beale Street, turned south onto Second Street, then headed east on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to return to the park. As the first protesters made their way back into the park, those in the tail end of the march were crossing the intersection of Ida B. Wells Street and MLK Boulevard between FedEx Forum and St. Patrick Catholic Church when MPD officers approached them from behind. Officers soon deployed pepper spray and made arrests, according to witness accounts and video footage.
Police body camera footage released by District Attorney Steve Mulroy shows a line of about 10 orange-vested parade marshals had assembled at the rear of the march, forming a human wall between the last marchers and MPD squad cars that were crawling forward. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with arms interlinked, the marshals faced the approaching squad cars as they slowly walked backward, giving ground.
It was then, video shows, that an officer on foot began spraying a chemical agent into the faces of some of the marshals as he shouted, “Hey! Y’all got to go!” Other officers then began physically grabbing marshals, wrestling some to the ground.
“Despite repeated requests to clear the roadway, several individuals near MLK Ave and Fourth refused to leave the street and instead interlocked arms, forming a human chain,’’ MPD said in a statement the day after the march. The statement also said protesters had a permit to use Church Park but didn’t have a permit to march on the streets.
Moments before police began spraying marchers, an officer is heard on the footage saying protesters are blocking the advancing police cars. “Hey, they’re holding up the cars,” the officer appears to say. “They’re pushing up against them. They’re pushing up against the cars.”
However, video footage appears to show several feet of space between the line of marshals and the advancing squad cars.
Nelson said, in his view, the police charge into the crowd was needless and only created “chaos”.
“(MPD) actively prevented the clearing of the street,” Nelson said. “Then it became a multi-hour chaos that they created that caused the street to be blocked for those additional hours that otherwise wouldn’t have been blocked.”
Nelson said he began assisting people who had been doused with pepper spray. He gave people bottles of water to help clear the pepper spray from their eyes and instructed others to turn their shirts inside out as a method to avoid breathing in noxious fumes. Nelson also comforted people who were initially detained but released by the MPD.
“It was happening so fast. A lot of it was just trying to take it all in and then making decisions like, okay, here’s somebody who needs help,” Nelson said.
While trying to get people into the park and out of the intersection, he saw a safety marshal being detained and dragged by Memphis police. Nelson said he then followed the officers. It was then that he was stopped by MPD and told to back up, he said. Nelson said no. Soon, police arrested him.
“I knew that what I was doing was probably, I was risking him arresting me, but I thought it was worth it for this person to have a chance of going free. They were dragging him along the ground, and I knew this person,” Nelson said.
Nelson said when he arrived at 201 Poplar, he was strip-searched and booked. He was brought to a bright holding room about the size of a basketball court, containing about 100 people. There was no clock or windows, just a TV replaying DVD movie trailers. Nelson said several people there told him they’d been in the room for up to 72 hours.
People in the holding room who were caught lying down, sleeping, or standing would be put in a holding tank, a small room that holds up to about 10 people, Nelson said. People would be placed in the room until the guards changed shifts, when they would usually be put back in the larger room.
Despite a series of emails sent to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office seeking comment, the Sheriff’s Office did not address Nelson’s allegations.
At 8:22 a.m. the following morning, Nelson was approved for release on his own recognizance (ROR), a pretrial release in which detainees determined to be low risk are released based on commitment to appear in court. However, Nelson was not given the ROR paper until two hours later. Finally, around 4 p.m., Nelson was given another set of papers, went through the release process, and walked out of 201 Poplar at 5 p.m. to a crowd of more than 20 friends and supporters.
“It was such a joyful moment. I mean, of course, my wife was there, and I got to be reunited with my wife, and then got to be next with (co-defendant) Reuben (Burch) as he looked and saw this community of people that he had known about, (though) he didn’t know actually cared about him,” Nelson said. “I felt so proud of being a part of this community that had made this commitment and had shown up in love even for someone they didn’t know.”
Supporters started showing up outside 201 Poplar before 2 p.m. that Sunday. They made cards for the three arrestees and also shared food and drinks.
Liana Venezia said the release of Nelson and the others came as a “tremendous relief.’’
“I had actually asked Nelson’s wife if there were any updates on when he would be released when he and Reuben walked out. We had waited several hours at that point,” said Venezia. “I just kept thinking, ‘Thank God, thank God.’ It’s terrible to have someone you care about locked up and to have limited contact with them. You just want to know that they’re OK.”
Venezia had waited for the release of the three protesters since 2 p.m., and there was already a crowd of about 10 people waiting there. Rahaim was released about three hours after Nelson and Burch.
This was Nelson’s second trip to the hoosegow for his activism. He was arrested in 2017 in Nashville during the Poor People’s Campaign, he said. Those charges were later dropped and expunged.
The Institute reached out to MPD for comment. The agency offered no new information, directing a reporter to the statement it had released on March 29.
“While organizers had a valid permit for use of the park, the permit did not include a march. During the event, participants began marching into the roadway,’’ the statement said in part. “Officers observed multiple individuals in the street obstructing traffic and made repeated verbal requests for approximately 40 minutes for them to move to the sidewalk so that normal traffic flow could resume and to ensure the safety of all individuals involved.”
MPD’s rough handling of the protesters at the rally was eye opening to many witnesses, Nelson said.
“More white people and middle-class people are becoming aware of what’s been hidden from plain sight,’’ he said. “It’s been easier to look away. But that’s gotten harder, and so more of these people that are accustomed to being treated with deference by the police are now coming face to face with it. That’s what happened at No Kings.”
Nelson, 41, has been a criminal justice reform advocate since 2015, working with multiple groups like the Poor Peoples Campaign and recently Free the 901. Despite his arrest, he said he still has high hopes for the future of advocacy.
“More people are taking action, and we are laying the foundations for turning the tide. It hasn’t happened yet so more losses … are going to come.… until we get enough people with enough will to put a stop (to it) and then … turn some things around. And I believe the long-term battle is worth fighting,” Nelson said.
