Growing up as one of the few black people in rural Maine, Kandace Montgomery longed to escape.
Kids picked on her. She had no black teachers and learned little of African-American history. She struggled with whether to try to fit in or hide. She felt angry, even suicidal.
"People honestly, literally, had almost never seen a black person before in their life," Montgomery recalled. "I was like, 'Let me get out of here.' "
So she did — moving after college to Minneapolis, where she joined other young black organizers who have spent years protesting police brutality and calling for the defunding of the police department.
The 29-year-old Montgomery drew national exposure when she asked Mayor Jacob Frey whether he supported abolishing the police. The video of Frey saying no to Montgomery, and her dismissive response, went viral the day before a City Council majority backed defunding.
But Montgomery and her allies had long pushed those issues, well before the killing of George Floyd ignited public demands for reforming police here and around the country.
"People are seeing leaders who have been on the ground working and organizing and speaking for years," said Molly Glasgow, a member of MPD150, a group that advocates for defunding police.
As outrage swept the country over the 2014 police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Montgomery and other activists launched the Minneapolis chapter of Black Lives Matter. They led a large protest against police brutality that shut down part of the Mall of America, leading to the arrest of her and other activists.