Saturday, June 22, 1996: Keshia Thomas felt a kind of spontaneous anger rising through her body as she observed a group from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan positioned on the second floor promenade of the city hall building in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Klan members held a permit to conduct a rally on the public property.

        Standing below on the street among 300 or so anti-Klan protesters, Keshia, an 18-year-old African American woman, caught sight of a white man watching the spectacle. He displayed Confederate flags on his vest and T-shirt. Overcome with emotion, Keshia joined a group of angry students, both black and white, who rushed the man. Keshia reported later,  “I wanted to yell at him,  ‘What did I ever do to you?’” Before she could engage the man, someone hit him with a sign and others began to beat him. Once on the ground the man received multiple punches and kicks to the body.

        Keshia responded immediately. She threw her body over the victim to protect him from the blows. Police stepped in and led him to a squad car for a quick departure from the angry crowd. Keshia learned later the man was not a Klan member. When she came to his aid, she believed him to be a white supremacist like those leading the Klan rally above the street.

         “He’s still somebody’s child…You don’t beat a man up because he doesn’t believe the same things you do,” Keshia noted after the incident. A bit surprised by all the attention she received, she said,  “People don’t have to remember my name. I just want them to remember that I did the right thing” (People, July 8, 1996, page 86).

        Living life based on a code of clearly defined values often produces surprising results…to everyone except the person with the values.

        Keshia believes racism is always wrong. Her value system led her to City Hall on the Saturday of the Klan rally. Keshia believes all people have a right to hold to their own beliefs even when they conflict with hers. She approached the man who would be beaten to challenge his ideas, not threaten his safety. Keshia believes no one should be abused physically for the convictions they express. Keshia believes violence solves nothing.

        Of course, the reason I know she really holds to these values is because I watched the news report showing her laying her own safety on the line for another human being with whom she strongly disagreed. Talking about values has become a national pastime of sorts these days. Living out a strong value system in the real world is quite another matter. Value-based living always costs something.