Community gathers at mural to remember teen killed in 2020 and call for continued racial justice work
By Meg Wade for Ashland.news
Two dozen circled around the mural of Aidan Ellison on Mountain Street outside Ashland High School on Sunday to honor a life cut short and to speak out against racist violence. Sunday’s vigil marked the fifth anniversary of Ellison’s death.
Nineteen-year-old Ellison, who was Black, was shot in the parking lot of the Stratford Inn by 47-year-old Robert Paul Keegan, who is white, on Nov. 23, 2020.
In 2023, Keegan was sentenced to 12 years on multiple charges, including first-degree manslaughter. His acquittal on a first-degree murder charge led some in Ashland to protest after his sentencing.
Ashland City Councilor Gina DuQuenne opened Sunday’s event, before introducing Becca Laroi, assistant principal of Ashland High School, and Marvin Woodard, belonging and engagement coordinator for Racial Justice at Southern Oregon University.
“I was here at the time of Aidan’s passing, and I got to see the impact on his family and friends and those close to him,” said Laroi, who also stressed the broader consequence for the whole community: “If we don’t treat it as something that’s happening to us, it will happen again.”
Woodard said he came ready to speak “to our students.”
“I love you,” he told the mostly older crowd, “But I’m going to speak to my people.”
In his remarks, he stressed the importance of considering one’s personal legacy in one’s choices.
“Is this the right decision for now, and will this be the right decision for later?”
“What happened to Aidan is evil,” Woodard said. “We had two people who couldn’t ask, ‘is this the right decision for now, and will this be the right decision for later?’ Take that pause. Not every decision you make will have that weight. But we have an obligation to ask that question.”
“It all comes with an impact, and we want to be on the right side of that impact.”
Woodard remembered Ellison as “a clownster.” Community members who stepped up to share afterwards also honored Ellison as “a lion” — a quality captured in the mural, which casts Ellison’s shadow as the outline of a lion.
The mural was organized in 2021 by Ashland High School’s Truth to Power Club, and painted by Ashland High graduate Isa Martinez Moore.
Current members of Truth to Power were in attendance on Sunday, including co-presidents Keeya Wiki and Amara Lowe.
Wiki, who leads the school’s Native Student Union, agreed. “I think it’s really important to come out here and be part of this. This mural and his story should regularly be taught in the high school.”
The mural isn’t the only site where Ashland residents have sought to remember Ellison. A memorial in the parking lot of the Stratford Inn continued long after his death.
Volunteers who had maintained the memorial pressed the inn to reinstate it, said TJ Neal, who attended Sunday’s vigil. The inn put up a plaque in its place, but this too is now gone.
“Maybe call the Stratford Inn to ask about the missing plaque,” Neal suggested to the group.
“It’s really important that we continue talking about his story,” said Amara Lowe, who is also president of the high school’s Black Student Union. “A lot of people in their freshman year don’t know about it. It’s important to honor his legacy. I don’t want this to be a part of Ashland history that is forgotten.”
Email Ashland resident and freelance journalist Meg Wade at news@megwade.net.
