Protestor in Dudley Square: Isaiah Wilkerson, 19, is from Fields Corner and joined a protest march from Dudley Square to South Bay last night. Photo by Lauren Dezenski“Hands up!” “Don’t shoot!”

(Thud, thud)

Isaiah Wilkerson gazed up at the four floors of windows a few yards away. Silhouettes pounded on the window panes reinforced by metal bars as a thousand protesters gathered just beyond the wall of the South Bay Correctional Facility. Other inmates flipped the light switches in their rooms on and off, in time with the protesters’ chants on the street below.

“No justice no peace!”

(Thud thud, thud thud)

“I’ve never been to a jail to protest,” said Wilkerson, who is black. “But these people are my color. I probably have a future friend in there. It’s good to know we have their support and they have ours.”

Wilkerson, 19, is a Fields Corner kid, and so “Originally From Dorchester” that he has the shirt to prove it. It’s the same tee he was wearing at the Tuesday night protest against a grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown.

“I just felt like we had to come out,” he said.

Earlier in the night, Wilkerson and five friends, another four of whom are from Dorchester, stood in the park across from the Boston Police District B-2 station in Dudley Square wearing poster boards hung around their necks. His read: “No to racist police brutality from Ferguson to Boston!”

Boston police estimate 1,500 people converged on the park carrying signs, cameras, children, and food around 7 p.m. before peacefully marching up Dudley Street to Melnea Cass Boulevard, where police stopped protesters at the Massachusetts Avenue Connector.

Protest in Dudley Square: Police estimate the protest drew roughly 1,500 people. Photo by Lauren DezenskiWilkerson is studying to become a social worker at Bunker Hill Community College. He planned to stick around until the protests came to a peaceful conclusion. Though it was his first experience protesting outside a prison, Wilkerson said he learned from his father, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Georgia in the ‘60s. His mother’s stories about the busing/desegregation era and related racial tensions in city neighborhoods helped remind him “how bad it used to be.”

“I feel like this, tonight, will go down in history,” he said.

If Boston’s protest outside the corrections facility goes down in history, it will not be for any serious violence. Many remarked at the cooperation between police and protesters, both in Boston and across the country, notably in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and New York. In Boston, even when police barricaded the street to stop protesters from marching on to Interstate 93, there were few scuffles, if any.

At 9:30, many protesters turned around from the barricade and marched up Massachusetts Avenue into the city, stopping traffic but remaining largely peaceful. All told, 51 were arrested in Tuesday night’s Boston protests, 33 from the Massachusetts Avenue Connector/South Bay area, according to State Police.

“These protests feel very spontaneous,” said City Councillor Charles Yancey, walking alone with the crowd outside the prison just after 9 p.m. He and City Councillor Tito Jackson participated in the protest. “So far, I’m very, very happy with how Boston Police is handling this.”

Jack Porter, of Newton, was walking near Yancey. Porter remarked that Monday night’s protests in Boston reminded him of marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Chicago in 1967.

“It’s obviously a little different, but people are still marching against the same thing: Police inefficiency. That poor judgement was an issue then too,” he said. “This is needed every once and a while in Boston. This can be a good thing.”

While walking on the sidewalk as protesters marched in the street, Soraya Beauverun, 22, was careful to note she was there to support the protesters, not necessarily to full-out protest. The Jamaica Plain native studies social psychology at UMass Boston, and said she and many of her friends heard about the protest, organized by the national advocacy group Black Lives Matter, on Instagram. Beauverun, who is black, said she and her friends said a prayer before heading out to Dudley.

“Just something little asking God to keep us and everyone else safe,” she said.

Seth Woody was one of the many white faces in the crowd. Woody, an organizer with the Youth Jobs Coalition said it was important to have all races represented and that the turnout speaks to the city’s organizing community.

“I was deeply dismayed by the grand jury’s decision, and as a white person, it’s appalling to know that I benefit from that system,” he said. “The institutions in this country protect white people. It’s our responsibility to call this out.”

As he was speaking to the Reporter outside of the prison, one inmate spelled out “Mike Brown” with strips of paper on a window pane.

“See?” he said, motioning to the name on the lips of so many across the country since his death in August. “This is the system we have to fix. This is what they’re talking about.”