Curtis Shannon Jr. said an incident of mistaken identity with the Lima Police Department changed his life’s ambitions and thrust him into fighting racial injustice.
David Trinko | The Lima News
LIMA — At North Carolina A&T, Curtis Shannon Jr. is royalty.
His classmates elected him Mr. North Carolina A&T, a high honor at any Historically Black College and University, especially the largest one in the nation. That means there are expectations of him as a student, as a leader and as a man.
“You are a king, and my opinions matter in all aspects of our lives,” Shannon said. “You have to hold yourself to a higher standard as a person. That’s having a 3.5 GPA, being a well-rounded student and being overly involved in organizations. It’s pretty much being who a king should be and wearing the crown in the best manner. It’s living your life in the light and pretty much making sure that you’re always doing right by people.”
Like any college student, the senior from Lima has dreams and aspirations after his tuition-paid scholarship time at North Carolina A&T. He aspires to attend Stanford University for law school. He wants to fight for minorities to have equal access to money.
It’s a different course than he intended. He always thought he wanted to be an orthodontist, until he pulled into his own driveway one day and left feeling anything but royal.
“I wanted to make sure that I can fix the smiles of people, so that they can feel better about themselves,” he said, pausing. “My life was completely changed at that moment.”
‘Some unfair situation’
Shannon, 21, said he spent his formative years in Lima trying to be the best person he could be.
He is the son of an immigrant mother from Jamaica and a father who’d been charged with various crimes, including one that sent him to federal prison. He wanted none of that.
“That’s just not the life I want to live,” he said. “I prided myself on having a clean criminal history, always staying out of the way and being an honor student in school.”
That night as a 17-year-old, he drove his mother’s car home from his sister’s house around the corner. As he pulled in the driveway, he started to get out of the car when he noticed the Lima Police Department cars.
“The police swarmed the house and told me to get back in my car,” Shannon recalled. “They told me I’m a danger to myself and put me in handcuffs. They called me a 50-year-old man, and I’m just like, ‘I look nothing like this old man.’”
It took time to clear his name, that he wasn’t that 50-year-old Black man leaving a known drug area. It took a toll on him and changed his trajectory.
“I feel like no one should ever have to go through some unfair situation like I did,” he said. “I had to get a court-appointed attorney and never met the court-appointed attorney until the date of my case.”
It made him re-examine who he was and how others perceived him.
“I lived a life crime-free, no criminal record,” Shannon said. “I graduated high school as an honor student. So to be painted in a light as a bad person or a criminal? It really mentally changes you.”
Leaving Lima
The 2019 Lima Senior graduate originally planned on attending the University of Toledo on a full ride to study dentistry. Shannon hadn’t even considered a historically Black college, but he decided “I really didn’t want to be in Ohio” after his interaction with police.
“I really never wanted to set foot back on the grounds of Lima, Ohio, again,” he said.
Attending North Carolina A&T changed him for the better.
“It ended up being one of the most life-changing experiences,” he said. “They upped the ante with $70,000 in scholarships. To be leaving with no debt at home and pretty much having the same aspects of a full ride, my life circumstances have pretty much changed me.”
He left Lima with no intentions of ever coming back. The more time he spent helping in North Carolina, though, the more he realized he wanted to come back to help.
“My image has definitely softened with the City of Lima, especially seeing the progressive aspects of our communities and the new shops popping up around here,” he said.
He’s seen dilapidated housing torn down and minority students receiving additional assistance to help them succeed. It’s becoming a place with a future.
“It’s just something you can take pride in,” he said. “I was born here, man. It’s someplace that I forever can call home. Just to see it developing like this, it’s very heartwarming.”
Coming home
Shannon was back in Lima last week, for the somber occasion of the funeral of childhood friend Kyius Simpson, who died in a recent motorcycle crash. Shannon often hears the voice of his friend.
“It’s kind of surreal that I’m sitting here right now, having to bury my best friend yesterday,” Shannon said. “But he always said, ‘Keep moving forward. Keep going, no matter how bad stuff will get.’ He always looked in a positive manner and the positive aspects of life.”
That enthusiasm for the future was contagious, especially when moments of his past still hurt deeply.
It helped motivate him toward a law career. While he had his own need for a lawyer during that case of mistaken identity, he sees himself being a bigger agent for change by helping people as an estate and property attorney practicing civil law.
“I tell people that civil law was where you really get the change that you’re looking for,” he said. “When you start messing with people’s money, people start to do different things. People start to move differently. People start to reach out more and ask questions about how they can assist you, how they can help you better. When you’re changing the monetary aspect of things, it’s like you have more sense of power and control. You’re going to have an impact.”
He sees an opportunity to open up more opportunities for minority communities, who still face issues getting access to loans and with generational wealth.
“I feel like we still face the systemic problems of redlining and gerrymandering, as well as minorities not being able to be approved for home loans,” Shannon said.
“… We’re sitting in 2022, when we have hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of years of statistical data and facts to show this is a problem that we aren’t adequately taking care of. It’s not enough to show that we aren’t even having the same advantages as people who might not look like us.”
Bringing change
They’re not just empty words for him. They come with action. He helped organize Black Lives Matter marches in Lima. In North Carolina, he created the Greensboro Youth Community Leaders LLC, working with other organizations. He helped put food boxes around Greensboro to help with food insecurity.
He’s also created the Curtis Shannon Jr. Foundation Inc., with a focus on increasing the number of male minorities enrolled in higher education.
It all has him looking for a change and realizing he can be a leader of it.
“We’re still dealing with a lot of the same problems that we may have been dealing with in the past,” he said. “Now we need to find ways to deal with it, in a new light and a new manner. We should be able to have conversations about these things.”
Reach David Trinko at 567-242-0467 or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
