Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr. has been active in the jewelry industry since 2007, when he cofounded Diamonds Do Good (formerly the Diamond Empowerment Fund), the industry nonprofit that supports charities in the communities where diamonds are mined and cut.
He remains an executive committee member of the group’s board.
Chavis also has a long history of civil rights activism. A member of Martin Luther King Jr.’s advance team, he garnered international fame as a member of the Wilmington Ten, who were falsely convicted of arson and conspiracy in 1971. The case was reversed on appeal, and the charges were dropped after key witnesses retracted their testimonies. (You can see him talk about the experience here.)
Chavis later served as the executive director of the NAACP and as national director of the Million Man March. His activism continues today: He and his children took part in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Here, Chavis discusses his reaction to recent events, how the jewelry industry should respond, and whether the industry has an issue with diversity. This interview occurred on Juneteeth, which commemorates June 19, 1865, the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free.
JCK: You have been a part of many demonstrations over the years. Some have said that this most recent spate feels different. Do you find that?
Ben Chavis: If you compare what is happening in 2020, to what was going on in the 1960s, back then you had some Jewish Americans, some Latinos, joining in, but those marches were primarily African Americans. These new protests are truly multiracial, multicultural, multilingual. That’s a big difference. It’s also intergenerational, and they transcend socioeconomic stratifications. I see that as an evolution. There’s an outcry for equality that transcends race, that transcends gender, transcends class. It’s a much wider spectrum.
It is possible this is a tipping point, an inflection point. This outcry for equal justice and racial justice will not subside until there’s structural and systemic changes in American society. This is not just a movement of people in the United States. It’s been globalized. You have people in Africa protesting for social change in America.
As someone who was falsely convicted of a crime and spent time in jail because of it, is it distressing that these issues with law enforcement persist?
If you go back to 1968, the Kerner Commission issued its report about urban unrest. That was 50 years ago. What has happened in those 50 years? What I think we’ve learned is this is a systemic problem and we need to do systematic changes. We don’t need cosmetic changes or surface changes.
I don’t believe the police alone are the problem. I think the police have become a point of focus because of the lives that have been taken and the incidents that have been caught on video. Keep in mind, in the 1960s, we didn’t have social media. We did not have cell phones. We didn’t have video recorders in almost everybody’s hands like today.
Police reform is much needed, but we need to look at reforming health care, reforming education. Many of our neighborhoods are still segregated. COVID-19 exposed not just preexisting health issues in United States, but it also exposed systematic problems that have existed over the last five decades.
A lot of jewelry trade shows and events are not that diverse. How do we reach out to get more people of color involved in the industry?
I have been to the last 10 JCK shows. Over that time, I have seen a lot more people of color involved. That’s positive, but it’s not where we should be. I think that the future of the diamond and jewelry industry is contingent upon not only having more people of color as employees, but we’re also going to hopefully see more representation in the C-suites of major companies.
I believe the jewelry industry can play a leadership role in helping move toward more inclusive, fairer, more equitable solutions to the challenges that the world faces.
