For white East Tennessee residents interested in assisting minority justice movements like Black Lives Matter Knoxville and Comite Popular de Knoxville (an organization for undocumented immigrants), there is now a home: Showing Up for Racial Justice-865.

While SURJ-865 is still deciding on its formal leadership structure and some aspects of its programming, nearly all of the two dozen supporters at its second meeting on Jan. 11 were interested in aiding in the struggle for racial and social justice in Knox, Anderson, Blount, and Jefferson counties.

Attendees at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Kingston Pike discussed issues such as how to engage their white friends in healthy, meaningful debate about race, plans to assist groups like Black Lives Matter without talking down to minorities, and how or even if they should use their self-described white privilege to assist minorities. Although people of all backgrounds are welcome, SURJ is designed to encourage white activists to participate in social-justice movements and with minorities in their struggle for equality, while respecting such groups’ autonomy and independence.

“Black folks need their own space, separate from the problems that can come from having to deal with white folks in those spaces, and just free of all those complications to plan their own liberation effectively, and it’s our job to support it, not tell them how to do that work,” says Alex Fields, spokesperson for SURJ-865.

As the local chapter of Black Lives Matter only accepts blacks as members—which organizers say is an effort to establish a “black space” for frank conversation—SURJ-865 is designed to give white activists an organization to rally around in the pursuit of racial justice, whether it is in support of Black Lives Matter initiatives or fighting to give undocumented immigrants in Tennessee in-state tuition. It was only after a request by local Black Lives Matter organizers that SURJ-865 was created. Founding members of both Knoxville groups work for the Highlander Research and Education Center, an organization in New Market dedicated to grassroots activism in Appalachia and the South.

While it may appear ironic that Black Lives Matter Knoxville does not allow whites and other non-blacks as members, local BLM organizer André Canty points out that the organization works with many groups of different backgrounds. But those most affected by racial discrimination should be the ones taking the lead in effecting change, he says, instead of the other way around.

“When it comes to any kind of issue, whether it’s black lives or for poor whites in Appalachia, the people most affected should meet and they should lead the charge,” Canty says, “And then those not affected and allies, in this case white people, then collaborate once we’re ready and once we’re organized.”

Organized in October, the local SURJ chapter of the national organization is still brand new. The second meeting of SURJ-865 was supposed to be in November, but the leadership postponed it since it fell on the same day as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s visit to Knoxville. Instead, they encouraged members to join the protest against the outspoken, anti-immigration candidate.

To support racial justice and groups like Black Lives Matter, SURJ-865 will go into white communities, churches, and workplaces to get more people involved, Fields says. While the organization is still identifying areas where it can help, the group marched in Knoxville’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally on Monday.

“In the longer run, we’d like to start planning events of our own, taking direct action, and doing whatever we can to get white folks active from every level,” Fields says, “Whether it’s organizing study groups or workshops for Sunday school class, whatever ways we can reach more white folks.”

Fran Ansley, a retired instructor from the University of Tennessee, noted that even during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, black activists told their white counterparts that they had a responsibility to organize their own groups to bring in more white people.

“Many of the black leaders said to the white students, ‘Y’all need to stop trying to boss us around, you need to let us make our movement ourselves, and we would like you to go organize white people to join our movement. That’s what we need,’” Ansley says.

“There is a need for white people to talk to other white people about [racial equality], to recognize that the [Black Lives Matter] movement, though it is black-led, and it should be black-led, that white people have a part in it as allies,” Canty says.

While the national SURJ group was organized in 2009 to counteract the racist rhetoric that increased in the wake of President Barack Obama’s election, the group has seen a recent surge in interest by white activists looking for ways to fight for racial justice since the protests in Ferguson, Mo., says Pam McMichael, director of the Highlander Research and Education Center and one of the national founders of SURJ.

“The growth of chapters has really escalated as more and more white people have wanted to step forward,” she says.

The organization now has more than 100 chapters, according to its website, and has a goal of 7 million members.

SURJ-865 operates in Knox, Anderson, Blount, and Jefferson counties, and meets the third Monday of each month in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. More information on the group is available at facebook.com/SURJ865 and by emailing 865surj@gmail.com.

Photo by McCord Pagan

McCord Pagan

McCord Pagan is a graduate of the University of Tennessee who now works as a news assistant at Law360 in New York. He can be reached at mccord.pagan@gmail.com.