YOCONA â¢Â Lydia Koltai of Yocona marks 2016 as the beginning of her role as a community organizer.
After Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed by police, Koltai shifted from being a quietly concerned citizen to someone willing to speak out.
âI needed to be doing something in the community other than just feeling upset,â Koltai said.
Koltai, 39, reached out to April Grayson, director of Community and Capacity Building for the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, to see if there were any opportunities to volunteer. Soon after, Kyleen Burke, a Northeastern University law student, reached out with research she had done on Elwood Higginbottom, the last known lynching victim in Lafayette County.