By the time he was a teenager, Antonio Mays Jr. knew all about the struggle for civil rights and Black liberation.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Nat Turner, the Watts riots — Mays’ dad taught him the stories because he wanted his son to know his history, the history of being Black in America.

In 2020, 16-year-old Antonio watched the next chapter of that history begin to unfold from his home near Los Angeles. The murder of George Floyd on May 25 had sparked what would become the largest sustained protest movement in American history. So Antonio left a note telling his father he was going to make him proud, that he was going to accomplish something. And he left home for Seattle, a place he’d never been, a city where he had no known connections.