Pawley Theater on the Lincoln University campus began to buzz as Blue Tigers Rock the Vote 2018 neared.
The event held Wednesday night to coincide with freshmen orientation at Lincoln University, was intended to inform the young students about issues and to encourage them to register to vote, according to Mike Lester with Jefferson City Area Indivisible.
"We are trying to share the importance of being a responsible citizen and getting out to register and of voting," Lester said.
To emphasize the importance of registering and then voting, Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church Rev. Cassandra Gould, who is also the executive director of Faith Voices, invited seven incoming freshmen on stage. She lined four men up and strung police tape through their hands. She lined three women up on stage facing them. Gould reminded them about the protests that formed after the fatal Aug. 9, 2014, shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer. And she was in the St. Louis area on Dec. 23 that year, when a Berkeley police officer shot and killed Antonio Martin.
When Brown was killed, she realized something was different - young people sat in the street and said they weren't going to take it anymore, she said.
Gould rushed to Berkeley after the shooting and saw the scene.
"There was a row of young women and men in a line," she said. "I was out there. Other preachers were out there. By now, we were mad."
As she watched, officers holding police tape stepped forward. Gould instructed the men on stage with her to step forward, toward the women facing them.
Then, she had them step forward again. Gould said the scene on the stage looked like that in the street in Berkeley in 2014.
That December night, she saw the people facing police whisper to each other. She whispered in the ears of the women on stage.
"I heard someone count one two three," Gould said.
And the women on stage ripped the police tape from the men.
"Now the line got moved," Gould said. "Young people were brave enough to move the line. They said they were sick and tired of people boxing us out."
Youth in the St. Louis area mobilized, they sought out candidates who looked like themselves. They texted each other. Rappers rapped about going to vote.
"People who looked like young people on this stage showed up in ways they had never showed up," Gould said of the next election.
Although he had held his office for 23 years, they voted out St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, who chose not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in Brown's death.
A way to move the line, Gould told more than 100 people in Pawley Theater was to not only register to vote, but to vote.
As students had arrived earlier, organizers passed out information about Clean Missouri-Amendment 1, which would enact ethics reform measures and redraw district boundaries to be fair and competitive. They also gave students information about Raise Up Missouri, the initiative to raise the Missouri minimum wage, and they provided information on three medical marijuana proposals on the ballot.
Students were greeted in the lobby by representatives from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Jefferson City Area Indivisible, Faith Voices, Mizzou Students Demand Action, the NAACP and Citizens Climate Lobby.
And while speakers encouraged students to become active voters inside the theater, Indivisible representatives signed up voters outside the theater.
Kymberley Woodruff of Faith Voices for Jefferson City, the panel's emcee, told the young listeners that Clean Missouri takes money out of the hands of politicians, although she admitted that wouldn't interest the young people as much as Raise Up Missouri.
She asked listeners if some of them would have to take jobs in Jefferson City while they were attending the university. The Raise Up Missouri initiative would increase the minimum wage to $8.60 next year and $12 an hour by 2023.
"Would you rather make $8.60 in 2019?" she asked them.
What it is going to take is voters, she said. Speakers reminded the new students they have until Oct. 10 to register to vote if they intend to participate in the Nov. 6 general election.
"We will arrange transportation to get you all to the polls to vote," Woodruff said. "We don't just want to nag you to vote. But, we want to make sure you get to the polls and cast your ballots."
She said community activists want the students to get involved in the community. As does Lincoln University.
Woodruff encouraged the students to seek out organizations that could use their youth and enthusiasm.
Also at Wednesday's event, area high school seniors who just competed in a Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry festival shared their art with listeners.
Salem Sanfilippo Solindas, 17, said his two poems - titled "Mirror" and "Changes" - were very personal.
"(Mirror is) a reflection on my experiences with being an impact on other people and how stressful that is for me," Solindas said. "It's hard to comprehend that I can be an influence on other people. (Changes is) about learning to be positive, which is difficult for me, because I am very pessimistic normally."
Audience members snapped their fingers in appreciation of the poetry.
Seventeen-year-old Hope Lewis said her poem is about being a bi-racial American.
It's about being resilient through it all, Lewis said. It is titled "Morality over Society."
"My skin is a sin because I am not white," she recited. "My skin is a sin because I am not black."
Cue more snapping fingers.