Hundreds came to Denvillle Monday night for a rally some didn’t want to happen. Not far away in Roxbury, a group of recent high school grads challenged the school board to say the words, “Black Lives Matter.”

The political and social currents unmoored by the death two weeks ago of George Floyd continue to bubble through affluent and mostly Republican Morris County.

And to some, that’s a very good thing.

“We are fighting for the soul of this country and Denville residents are taking a giant first step,”  The Rev. Carol Patterson of the Calvary Baptist Church of Morristown, told about 600 people assembled before her in downtown Denville.

The crowd took a knee and stayed in that position for eight-plus minutes, the same amount of time a police officer allegedly kept his knee on Floyd’s neck.

Signs read “White Silence, White Consent,” “Justice Can’t Wait” and “Enough is Enough.”

Also speaking was a 13-year-old girl who seemed mature far beyond her years.

“I’m white,” she said to the crowd. And she challenged her generation to do something that has eluded generations of Americans for centuries – eradicate racism. The fact that she lives in Denville and is white is no surprise; only about 2 percent of the township’s estimated 16,000 residents are black, according to Census data.

Police were on hand, but this was a very peaceful event. As has been the case at other Morris County protests, one of the speakers thanked the cops for protecting the rally.

All this happened amid a social media campaign by Black Lives Matter Morristown to torpedo the event. A Facebook post by the group urged “boycott of the Denville demonstration to protect black & brown youth and to respect the memory of Stanton Crew, an unarmed black Morristown resident murdered by a Denville police officer.”

For the record, Crew was shot and killed by police in 1999 following a lengthy car chase on Route 80. It all began when Crew failed to stop when a Dover police officer tried to pull him over for allegedly driving erratically.

In the last few days, Black Lives Matter Morristown successfully stopped protests planned for Chatham and Montville, arguing that blacks were not involved in organizing or leading them.

But the Denville event went on.

Patterson acknowledged the dust-up, but said the good thing is that people of all types came together for justice.

Another speaker, Abdul Staten, said, “This moment belongs to all of us.”

While the rally was ongoing in Denville, the school board was holding a Zoom-like  meeting about 10 miles away in Roxbury. Three individuals, all of whom had graduated from the township high school within the last five years, said they were upset at seeing photos of some of today’s students posing with the Confederate flag.

They said the district needs to do a better job supporting diversity and challenging bias.

Earlier in the meeting, the superintendent of schools read a statement highlighting the district’s commitment to that very thing. Board members also took turns complimenting what the recent graduates had to say, calling it thought provoking.

Still, when one of the former students asked board members to say the words, “black lives matter,” no one accepted the offer.

In time, ignoring what’s happening in the country and world may no longer be an option.