Stacy Shaw sat alone in an Overland Park jail cell and sang freedom songs.
She sang to smother her fear of being another Black woman to die in jail — another Sandra Bland. She wanted the camera to record her singing if anything happened to her.
It was Shaw’s second arrest since she joined protests for racial justice at the end of May. Since then, she’s received hate mail, has been targeted with racist messages, and found her car broken into twice. She suspects unmarked police cars have parked outside her office.
For some years now a familiar face in city courts around the Kansas City area, where she is known for handling traffic tickets and family law, Shaw over the summer has reinvented herself as a leading protest organizer demanding revolutionary change.
Fellow protesters have described her as a warrior, a guide and the face of a movement. While some leaders and politicians have attended protests in their local areas, Shaw has shown up to 28 across the metro making one of the most visible protest leaders in the region.
And she says she’s not going to stop.
“There is nothing that you can do to me or anyone else in this revolution that is going to stop us,” Shaw said.
Gwen Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said she first met Shaw several years ago at an Urban League event where Shaw was educating people on the court system. Back then, the lawyer was just what she advertised: “Stacy Shaw – Attorney At Law.”
But this summer, Grant said, moved in part by Shaw’s law firm’s work representing arrested protesters, Grant found Shaw’s number and reached out. They started working together to provide support to the protests.
At one of the first mayor protests this year, Black Rainbow organizer Ray Billis said he was leading a march with a megaphone when Shaw approached him. Initially, he thought, “Who the hell is this lady?”
The two developed a mutual mentor relationship, calling each other at least twice a day. Billis, 24, introduced Shaw, 37, to new, radical ways of thinking, and Shaw helped him through major life decisions.
When they first met, Billis said he remembered Shaw saying something like, “Oh my goodness, are you sure we should be saying these things?”
Now, Billis said, she’s a fearless revolutionary.
“No one can do anything or say anything to deter her from what she believes.”
THE ATTORNEY
Shaw started her law firm at the Super Flea in Northeast Kansas City.
A podium and a white banner with red letters read: “Stacy Shaw – Attorney at Law. I fix traffic tickets.”
She had wanted to be a lawyer since second grade, and arrived in Kansas City about 10 years ago after earning a business administration degree from Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis and graduating from Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law.
When she opened her firm, she could only afford 50 business cards and a judge called her unprofessional for not having them on hand.
She handed out little red fliers, attended community events and advertised a base price of $99 to handle traffic tickets. Over time, her firm grew, working for a while at Nate’s Swap and Shop, then a few other buildings before settling at 39th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
She’s kept her prices low to make sure they’re affordable for the people. Now, she’s found that her protest activities aren’t appreciated by everyone.
At one protest outside police headquarters, a woman carried a sign that said, “Disbar Stacy Shaw.”
The woman pointed across the street to a woman in a yellow skirt and said she supported protesters more like her. This protester, she seemed to suggest, was happy and friendly.
The woman didn’t realize that protester was Shaw.
Drawing that kind of attention is a risk. Most lawyers don’t want to alienate potential clients among the general public.
“There are things in life that are so important that you have to be willing to put it all on the line,” Shaw said. “You have to put it all on the line for what you believe in and what is good for America.”
THE REVOLUTIONARY
During the first weekend of protests this summer at the Country Club Plaza, Shaw saw a police officer pepper spray a protester in the face, then continue to spray the protester even as his friends dragged him away
She was horrified. Shaw threw her body between the protester and the pepper spray in an effort to protect him.
On June 2, again at the Plaza, Shaw was trying to help move protesters from the street to the sidewalk after police threatened to arrest anyone in the street. She stepped in front of a young woman and said, “I got you.” Then, with her hands in the air, back facing the police and standing in the street, she was arrested.
Before that, Shaw had protested on only a couple of occasions. She never would have gotten so involved with the movement if she hadn’t watched how Kansas City police responded to protesters that first weekend.
Outside Kansas City police headquarters on June 16, when protesters demanded to be let into a Board of Police Commissioners meeting, Shaw used her knowledge as an attorney to push for answers about whether protesters were allowed to protest outside the windows.
At other protests, she’s led protesters in song, called for unity to change America’s destiny and demanded people stop tolerating systemic racism — using her platform to demand change and fight for what she believes in.
When she speaks at protests, she often acknowledges that she is afraid.
On a recent Wednesday, Shaw arrived about 9 a.m. to Kansas City’s metro patrol station to wait for the release of a fellow protester arrested the night before while driving home.
That afternoon, she sat in a lawn chair with a group of about 30 people discussing the concept of unconditional love, where the protest movement is headed next and abolishing systemic racism.
“This is a revolution for the soul of America,” Shaw said. And the foundation of the revolution, she told The Star, happens in conversations like those. Those conversations help educate people about the movement as it continues to mature.
It isn’t just about marching in the street, Shaw said. It’s about empowering vulnerable communities.
Rachel Hudson, 19, sat on a mat on the grass outside the station and listened to Shaw. She said Shaw’s persistence in attending protests shows who she is.
“It really just shows that she’s not a performative person; she’s not just doing it for the camera,” Hudson said. “(She’s saying) ‘I’m here for the people; I care about people here.’ And that’s what I love about Stacy Shaw.”
Shaw said she’s inspired by the recent election wins of progressives such as Cori Bush in St. Louis, who defeated incumbent William Lacy Clay to represent Missouri’s First Congressional District. And she’s watched her friend and mentor, former Kansas City councilwoman Alissia Canady, win the Democratic primary for Missouri’s Lt. Governor.
Patrick Wotruba, an organizer with The Miller Dream LLC, a community advocacy organization, described Shaw as a “warrior” and a guide.
Because she’s stepped up, he said, protesters are willing to follow her leadership.
Billis, the Black Rainbow organizer, said Shaw’s willingness to speak out despite having so much to lose, such as her law license, makes other people feel empowered to do what’s right.
The morning after she was released from police custody in Overland Park, Shaw and other protesters drove to the Johnson County jail in Olathe to lead the group in calling for the last protester’s release.
Sheriff Calvin Hayden declared the gathering an unlawful assembly. He said the group was inciting a riot because there were more than five protesters.
He handed Shaw a stack of papers, saying these were the ordinances the protesters would be charged with. Billis watched as Shaw read him the definition of inciting a riot. He later recalled seeing her as a “powerful, courageous Black woman.”
The protesters then split into groups of four, each protesting something different, to defeat Hayden’s definition of inciting a riot.
THE FIGHTER
In her Midtown apartment, away from threats of arrest, racist phone calls and chants of “I can’t breathe,” Shaw sang along to a Nina Simone song.
Shaw sliced homegrown basil. She marinated catfish in lemon juice and Old Bay seasoning. She boiled neck bones to cook collard greens — her aunt’s recipe.
Cooking is how she helps to heal herself. It’s how she manages her fear.
A group of men, former specialized military, have formed a private security detail for her. She herself is armed at all times, even in her office.
One friend, Shaw said, has on three occasions dreamed that Shaw was going to be shot in the back of the head at a protest.
But Shaw knows she won’t die until her purpose is complete. She believes in Buddhism and chants every day for world peace.
Everyone has a purpose, she said, and anyone can change the world.
After her arrest, Shaw decided she wasn’t just going to sit down and accept oppression. If she doesn’t fight for justice now, people will still be marching in 20 years.
An arrest is temporary. Tear gas is temporary. Even jail time is temporary. But being born Black in this country, Shaw said, is a permanent condition — until change happens.
There is nothing that anyone can do to stop the revolution, Shaw said. The goal is to dismantle systemic racism and white supremacy: “These chains that have been on Black and brown communities since we’ve gotten here.”
