How ‘Gardening While Black’ Almost Landed This Detroit Man in Jail

Marc Peeples, 32, said he returned to the half-abandoned neighborhood in Detroit where he grew up to create a garden, chip away at food deserts and teach children the value of urban horticulture.

By Audra D. S. Burch, New York Times

DETROIT — For nearly two years, a man tilled an overgrown park in a half-abandoned Detroit neighborhood into a tiny urban farm, filling the earth with the seeds of kale and spinach and radishes. He was black.

For half of that time, the man, Marc Peeples, 32, was the subject of dozens of calls to the police — the allegations growing more serious with each call — by three women who lived on a street facing the park. They were white.

The multiple police calls and reports made by the three women — Deborah Nash, Martha Callahan and her granddaughter, Jennifer Morris — eventually led to three stalking charges against Mr. Peeples and a trial. In a case first reported by The Detroit Metro Times, State District Judge E. Lynise Bryant threw the charges out at the trial, calling them fabricated and rooted in racism.

“These ladies testified they made the initial contact with him, not the other way around,” [Bryant] said in an interview. “They testified that they called the police and the parks and recreation department and they followed him to the bus stop and said he was in a gang and had a gun. That is the definition of harassment.”

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