Something’s going on in the city of Bristol, Virginia.
You can feel it before you can explain it. It’s not loud. It’s not flashy. It’s just there. Like folks have finally decided they’re done waiting their turn.
That doesn’t happen by accident.
Somebody’s been making calls. Sitting down at kitchen tables. Talking plain.
That somebody is Dr. Fergie Reid Jr., carrying on the kind of work his father, Dr. Fergie Reid Sr., was known for. Not speeches. Not headlines. Just finding people who care about their town or city in this case and telling them it might be their turn to do something about it.
And people listened.
You’ve got folks like Jackie Nophlin stepping forward for City Council.
She didn’t come up through politics. She came up crossing railroad tracks to get to school. Back when Douglas Elementary (segregated school) sat on the other side of the line and kids slipped between train cars just to make it to class on time.
She didn’t think she was poor growing up. Said she just figured that’s how life was. Not enough food sometimes. You don’t call it struggle when everybody around you is living the same way.
What she did learn early was how to work.
Fourteen years old, daycare job. Sixteen, serving food at church and bringing leftovers home so her family could eat. Seventeen, working summer programs to pay her own way for cheerleading.
No one handed her anything. She didn’t expect them to.
School had its moments. Not all of them good.
She stood in front of a crowd as a ninth grader, read her speech on the radio, got a standing ovation. Finished fourth. That’s when it clicked for her that things weren’t always fair.
She wanted to debate. Couldn’t. Not because she couldn’t do it, but because she wasn’t allowed. So a teacher pointed her somewhere else. Prose speaking. Jackie didn’t just compete. She won at every level they’d let her in.
That tells you something about a person.
Later on, she lived the military life as a spouse. Said it was the first place she saw people treated more by rank than by color. Then she came back home and saw the same old lines still drawn.
Life didn’t ease up for her. Husband struggled with alcohol. She lost a job she’d done right. Raised a family anyway and made sure her kids never knew the kind of hunger she grew up with.
Some folks in town used to call her the Al Sharpton of Bristol.
Wasn’t meant as a compliment.
She took it that way anyway.
Because if standing up for people gets you a nickname, there are worse things to be called.
Now she’s running for City Council.
Not alone.
There’s a whole group stepping in with her. Folks like Melissa Brown and Elijah Walker for Council. Rhoda Blackwell, Shannon Love, and Ric Watts for School Board. People who’ve lived here, worked here, raised families here. People who know what it costs to keep the lights on and food on the table.
That’s the thing about this slate. It doesn’t feel manufactured.
It feels local.
Bristol sits a long way from Richmond. People here know that. They also know nobody’s coming to fix things for them. If something’s going to change, it’s going to come from somebody who knows these streets, these schools, these bills that show up in the mailbox.
Somebody who’s lived it.
That’s what this looks like.
Not a wave. Not a movement with a slogan.
More like neighbors deciding they’ve waited long enough.
So yeah, maybe there is something in the water in Bristol.
Or maybe it’s just people remembering that this city belongs to them too.
And deciding to act like it.
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Written by John Peace. Cross-posted from the Rural Route Newsletter.
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