Despite His Arrest, #BlackLivesMatter Activist DeRay Mckesson Isn't Afraid to Keep Telling the Truth

Photo: Instagram (@deray)

DeRay Mckesson, the out civil rights activist and one of #BlackLivesMatter's most visible voices, was arrested on Saturday night during a peaceful protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

 

I was arrested in #BatonRouge last night and was held for 17 hours. I'm free now. The work continues.

A photo posted by deray (@iamderay) on Jul 10, 2016 at 7:46pm PDT

DeRay was one of (at least) 120 demonstrators taken into custody by the the Baton Rouge Police department after a night of rallying attention to last week's fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. While he and protest attendees marched down a Baton Rogue highway, he was booked on a charge of "obstructing a highway of commerce," reports The Washington Post. 

The social media world took notice of DeRay's arrest, and shortly after he was taken into custody, the hashtag #FeeDeRay started trending, with people all over the country calling for his release. 

After 16 hours, he was finally released on Sunday afternoon, reports The New York Times. In an interview following his release from jail, DeRay told NYT that he would still continue to protest the unjust deaths of people of color at the hands of police.

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“The police want protesters to be too afraid to protest, which is why they intentionally created a context of conflict, and I’ll never be afraid to tell the truth,” said DeRay. “What we saw in Baton Rouge was a police department that chose to provoke protesters to create, like, a context of conflict they could exploit.”