Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice.

Many young people in Baltimore knew well the names of these victims whose brutal deaths helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement. But 10 years ago this month, the latest name hit closer to home. The city’s schoolchildren could hear the chants in the streets. They maybe even joined in saying his name.

“Freddie Gray.”

On April 12, 2015, Baltimore Police chased Gray and arrested him after finding a small knife in his pocket. The 25-year-old West Baltimore man was shackled and placed unbuckled into a police van. The medical examiner ruled Gray’s death a homicide, concluding that the van ride caused a severe spinal cord injury that led to Gray’s death.

These young people from the city are now grown up and reflecting on how Gray’s tragic death in police custody, the weeks of protests and unrest that followed, and the intervening years of struggle and success for their city changed their lives. Some became teachers, parents, and others were simply driven to help their community.

Here are some of their stories.

The Nostalgist

When Greg Butler left his East Baltimore house in 2015, it was about more than Freddie Gray.

He was angry and frustrated about turning down big-time basketball scholarships after graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute because of a problem with high school course credits. He felt cheated because he had done everything right — and even avoided the temptation of selling drugs and other illegal activity to make quick money.

“I stayed broke in this pursuit of college. I had already done the sacrificing, but was not getting the residuals for that,” he said.

It was Butler on that April day who punctured the fire hose firefighters were using to put out the blaze at the CVS on Pennsylvania and North avenues. He faced 33 months in federal prison, but was sentenced instead in 2016 to pay restitution and three years of supervised probation.

A decade ago, thousands of people saw the iconic image of Greg Butler: on a bike, fist up, wearing a mask as he rode through the unrest.

Today, he said, he fears it’s his city that is now losing its identity. Between commercialization and gentrification, the city moves further away from the place he remembers growing up, Butler said.

The city is departing from its small-town feel, Butler believes, where elders were on committees to plan the annual block parties. Or when a blue-collar worker who could walk into Lexington Market and get an entire meal for less than $10.

Now, he said, “everything is pretentious.”

Baltimore used to be more family-owned, Butler added. So fighting against the tide, he grips hard onto the parts of the city that capture those nostalgic days. The Senator Theatre, for example, is one of his favorite places.

“To be a young dad and being able to take my kids to the movies, to be able to do that on a Sunday on a nice day and enjoy my city in that capacity, that’s probably the most important symbol of the pleasure of my life as-is,” Butler said.

The Teacher

De’asia Ellis remembers the broken promises.

Ellis was a junior at Frederick Douglass High School in 2015. After the protest near Mondawmin Mall erupted in violence, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her schoolmates as celebrities like football All-Star Ray Lewis and rapper Wale came to the school, promising resources and opportunities.

But, it was a “big pony show,” Ellis said, never really forming into any concrete opportunities for students.

“A lot of people came saying they were gonna do this and do that,” Ellis said. “It was like a publicity ploy.”

Despite her frustration, a seed Ellis’ grandparents planted in her — a commitment to nurture her community — was already starting to bloom.

“I knew that our community needed something consistent,” Ellis said.

So she found her passion: investing in kids and encouraging them to dream bigger.

Two years ago, Ellis, now a special education teacher at Mount Royal Elementary/Middle School, opened a dance studio — a place, she said, for kids to build character and “where imperfection is molded into success.” One day, she hopes to become a vice principal and already has the certification to make it happen.

“My main focus is always our youth and how can I help mold them into success,” Ellis said. “If we continue to work and guide them, we are going to have amazing, well-rounded, functional adults in the future.”

The Survivor

Michael Singleton’s mother, Toya Graham, became Baltimore’s unofficial “Mom of the Year” in 2015.

Singleton and Graham went viral after video captured her smacking, pulling and pushing 16-year-old Michael out of the violent fallout near Mondawmin Mall.

Ten years later and Singleton isn’t embarrassed or ashamed by his mother’s actions.

“She didn’t want me to be another Freddie Gray,” he said.

In the weeks after the video went viral, Singleton felt like he was on the highway to opportunity with possibilities he never imagined now seemingly available at every turn. He met former President Barack Obama. Oprah Winfrey called his house and wrote his mother a check. Alicia Keys made a house visit.

But ask Singleton today about the aftermath, and he’ll say there’s “a whole other life to live when the cameras go off.” Many of the promises and opportunities presented to him didn’t come through.

Singleton doesn’t think there are many opportunities back in the Park Heights neighborhood where he grew up, and he has since moved to East Baltimore. He’s currently promoting nightclubs, lounges and parties. He’s also building a clothing brand and looking for other job opportunities.

In the last 10 years, he felt weighty expectations from friends and strangers alike.

“My mom never said I was a perfect kid,” Singleton said.

Singleton never graduated from high school, but went back to get his GED through YO! Baltimore, a program that works with young people who aren’t enrolled in school. Singleton said he encourages the younger generation to take a different route than his.

The birth of his daughter, who is 4, put life into perspective, he said. He just wants an environment in which he can raise his kids and build his family, including a second daughter due in July, to the best of his abilities.

The spotlight in his youth, though, served up his personal life and all of its imperfections on a platter for everyone to see and criticize.

Singleton recently scrolled through his phone, reading comments from a social media post where people asked about what happened to him. Some thought he went to college. Others thought he moved away and assumed he was rich.

“It’s 10 years later and I still don’t have a big story to tell them,” he said. “I feel like I’m just getting by.”

The Caretaker

DaJuan Knight’s 13-year-old self is frozen in 2015.

Before a peaceful protest over Gray’s death turned violent near Camden Yards, Knight was photographed with his fist in the air by Devin Allen, a then-rookie photographer whose work during the unrest landed on the cover of Time magazine and turned him into a national name.

At the time, Knight didn’t fully understand the importance of the historical moment. But today, schooled in African American history, he knows the significance.

“People needed awareness. That should have been shown to the world,” Knight said, adding that he doesn’t fully agree with how violently some people reacted.

Knight excelled in sports when he attended Marriotts Ridge and Newtown high schools and said he even qualified for the Junior Olympics for the 100 and 200 meter dashes. But he started to lose his way when his brother was shot and killed right before Knight’s senior year.

The tragedy pushed him off course, he said, and he didn’t know where he was headed, which led to acting reckless and being disobedient with his mom.

Knight needed Baltimore, he said, to find himself, to figure out who he wanted to be as a man. He could have moved to Atlanta with his mom, but wanted to stay behind and get himself together on his own. Baltimore “can eat you alive,” he said.

“You gotta have your own mindset. You can’t be a follower. There’s always someone trying to pull you in to do wrong,” Knight added.

He now proudly accepts responsibility for taking care of his grandfather, a long-time longshoreman. Knight hopes to explore that career someday, but for now, he works at a car dealership and makes time for nieces and nephews.

“I try to keep myself busy,” he said. “If you don’t keep yourself busy, you will fall in a trap and get yourself in trouble.”

The Creator

When the world was watching the violence of the unrest in 2015, Martina Lynch, 18, tried to get them to listen.

To the music, to the spoken word, to people who truly wanted to protest peacefully.

“I definitely wanted to give as much encouragement at that time,” Lynch said.

A lot of what was happening with the arts after the killing of Freddie Gray is shared in a documentary “Not About a Riot” by Malaika Aminata, who recorded first-person accounts on the ground.

Lynch and rapper Young Moose wrote a song called “No Sunshine.” Lynch was also part of a poetry team that set up a mic and a speaker on the streets during the protests to deliver spoken-word pieces. She’d go on to share two of her works for a couple of TEDx Talks.

Gray’s death led to an emergence of art and artists that’s gained more traction over the years, she believes. Like the Black Arts District that formed to honor and uplift the historic and artistic legacy of Pennsylvania Avenue by empowering Black creatives.

Lynch said the violence “was wrong then and it’s wrong now,” but she understands “the frustration of the city at the same time.”

“We always hear about police brutality, but it’s never been something so tragic that has been publicized like that in Baltimore,” she added.

“It hit close to home.”

Lynch is still creating. She’s often in the studio making music. In recent years she moved to Atlanta to continue pursuing music, but she still spends time in Baltimore.

The Undefeated

Dominick “Dom” Carter was at home, glued to the TV when classmates from Frederick Douglass High School and others from across the city clashed with police near the closed Mondawmin transit hub after Freddie Gray’s funeral on April 27.

The incident drew massive negative publicity for his school, he said.

The next day, he and his classmates felt further violated as the National Guard lined up outside their school. Carter felt as though Douglass was singled out, the students unfairly given the offensive label of “rioters” and “thugs.”

“We were called everything but the child of God by the media,” he said.

The negative attention, he said, overshadowed the unique opportunities at the school, including an advanced media center and a trip to Cuba through the African Diaspora Alliance.

Carter joined in at least one protest at City Hall, where he thought there would be a bigger impact. Looking back, he wishes people had taken a stronger stance, something that would have landed a bigger economic jab, like the 13-month Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott during the Civil Rights Movement.

His love for Baltimore hasn’t faded over the last decade, and he finds himself always defending his beloved city. His dismay about the Baltimore Police is still strong as ever.

“While Freddie Gray hit the news, everybody knows somebody who had a bad run-in,” he said of encountering police on the city streets. “If you are in the city long enough, you’ve had one yourself.”

Today, Carter said he’s working hard, pulling 60- to 70-hour weeks at a Mazda dealership and spending his free time around the city’s Inner Harbor waterfront, with family and friends in West Baltimore, or taking short road trips. He wants to build deep roots in the city like his grandmother, who lived in the same house for 50 years. He also has a wish list for Baltimore: an NBA team again, more Fortune 500 companies and more people moving in.

“I have a lot of big dreams for this city. It is really home for me,” Carter said. “It’s on us to make this a great city because we live here.”