A couple of dozen Black Lives Matter supporters gathered at Little Rock Central High School on a hot Saturday morning not to protest but for a community cleanup.
For several participants, including organizer Laura Brunson of Little Rock CARBON (Community Activists Rebuilding Our Nation), the movement is just as much about community improvement as it is protesting for policy changes.
"Little Rock CARBON is about giving back to the black community in any way that we can, so not just protesting for change, but cleaning the community up," among other things, Brunson said.
Central High, a landmark in the civil-rights movement, was the perfect spot to start the cleanup, fellow organizer Marcus Hunter said.
In 1957, just three years after the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas declaring segregated schooling unconstitutional, nine black students enrolled at and attended the previously all-white high school. Community resistance and violence led President Dwight Eisenhower to call in U.S. Army troops to escort the nine children to school.
The high school is now a national historic site, so being there Saturday for the cleanup was significant.
"We thought it was important because of the historical factor of this place," Hunter said. "A lot of us have already been here for a lot of different protests, so it was a perfect idea for people to meet here and disperse to go to our different communities to clean."
After finding the area near the school largely already clean, the group split into smaller groups and fanned out to work in areas -- like Asher Avenue and Roosevelt Road -- that don't get as much attention from city crews, Hunter said. The goal, he said, is "to build up our communities."
Pulling together and building up the community is an important part of Black Lives Matter, he said.
"The black dollar is so powerful, and, if we continue to put that dollar back into our communities, it's going to keep building up, so we can make actual changes."
Another group Saturday moved to the juniors parking lot at Central High. It took pictures of a wall decorated by previous students, then painted the wall white to create a fresh place for students to leave their marks.
"I think it's very nice to do, in general," said Andrea Galindo about decorating the parking lot wall. It's something that she remembers students doing at a school where she was a tutor. "We let our kids do that, and they got so excited, because everyone wants to leave their mark somewhere."
Galindo and the volunteers said the marks from previous students will be re-created at a different location.
"We're not erasing the ones that were done," Galindo said. "We're creating a different spot for them. ... So, it's still here, it just allows more people to grow."
The volunteer group doesn't work only at schools. It also works at businesses in low-income areas and cleaning up Little Rock in general, volunteer Christian Mink said.
"We're showing the community that we still care about them and that we recognize the loss in interest of helping out each other," Mink said. "So, we're just refining areas that really, really need a cleanup -- really, really need an update."