In 1966, a young, Black woman set out to buy a house with her widow’s pension. Pregnant with her daughter, she found a lovely home in a predominantly Black Nashville neighborhood. Decades later, in July 1990, the woman’s daughter gave birth to a little boy named Shawn Dromgoole. Raised in the same house as his mother, he grew up with friends always outside with whom to play, and family close enough to visit for chocolate ice cream when his own freezer ran out. Shawn describes his childhood neighborhood as “a magical, almost fairytale-esque” place.
But, over time, Shawn’s neighborhood began to gentrify. Family and friends moved away and, Shawn explains, “the sense of community began to disappear, though you don’t realize it as it is slowly trickling away.” Shawn and his mother stayed while the neighborhood became increasingly white. And that was only the beginning of what impacted Shawn’s life.
In 2012, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager returning home from a Skittles run, was shot and killed by a white man. Things escalated in 2020 with the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old black man, who was shot while jogging in Georgia, and George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. These events struck Shawn hard. “I realized they could be me,” he reflected. It was after the death of George Floyd that protests ignited and there was a world-wide call for racial justice. Black Americans began to give voice to the challenges and fears they encounter daily.
For Shawn, the fear resonated deeply. “I put on a new pair of Nikes and had planned to go for a walk,” Shawn remembered. “I wasn’t consciously thinking about George Floyd, or Trayvon or anything else, but I literally couldn't go.” The next day, he tried again, but couldn’t force himself to step off his front porch. “In retrospect,” Shawn explains, “I realize that I was having a panic attack, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.”
Shawn called his mother who offered to walk with him. “She was not going to let me be afraid,” he explains. The two walked, talked and laughed, but when they got home, Shawn said they began to feel angry. Without intending to spark a movement, Shawn took to social media and posted this message:
Yesterday, I wanted to walk around my neighborhood but the fear of not returning home to my family alive kept me on my front porch. Today, I wanted to walk again and I could not make it off the porch. Then I called my mother and she said she would walk with me.
Within minutes of posting, neighbors commented offering to walk with Shawn. The next day, they did. “100 people showed up to walk with me,” he said. The media got a hold of the story and the next week, Shawn found 300 people gathered in his front yard for a community walk. As they walked, other neighbors joined from their front porches. People who lived two houses from one another met for the first time and walked and talked. In the year since, Shawn’s neighbors continued to walk, and his neighborhood has been transformed.
Seeing how communities could be changed with the simple act of walking together, Shawn planned other walks to help transform neighborhoods into communities. “My favorite thing about the walks is what I call The Walk Sound—the chatter I hear behind me when we are walking. That’s the sound of new relationships growing and communities being built,” Shawn said.
Shawn has created a literal movement branded under the name “We Walk with Shawn.” Its mission is to connect communities across the country by hosting neighborhood walks, encouraging discussion of important topics, and empowering Black and brown people through walks and conversation. Shawn recently incorporated a certified charity, More Than A Walk, Inc., a 501(c)(3), which will allow Shawn to focus full-time on delivering a mission of building community through education, fitness, and the arts.
To learn more about We Walk with Shawn, More Than a Walk, and how to invite Shawn out to your community, visit his website at https://wewalkwithshawn.org/.