A year ago, Kaurie Daniels would never have imagined herself leading protests against police brutality in the US.

The 28-year-old Bermudian had just moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Her dream was a successful acting career.

And then Michael Brown’s fatal shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, caught her attention. A white police officer fired 12 times on the 18-year-old robbery suspect. He was unarmed.

“The way it affected me and many others is what forced me to get involved,” she said of the incident which gained international press last August. “There hasn’t been another movement like this in the US since the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s.”

Atlanta knows Ms Daniels as “Queen K”. She’s organised and led protest rallies and been Maced for those efforts. She’s also been nominated for a Courageous Woman Award 2015, handed out by the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation. The charity is named after an African-American teenager who was killed in the 1950s because he allegedly flirted with a white woman.

Everything changed for the former Berkeley Institute student after Michael Brown was shot.

She heard about a town-hall meeting in her area to discuss police shootings and brutality against African-Americans and decided to get involved.

The first rally they organised attracted nearly 200 people. More than 5,000 showed up for a second protest at the CNN Center.

“That was definitely a humbling experience and it was from that point forward that we realised we had a responsibility because people were angry and wanted to see change,” Ms Daniels said.

“From that day forward I got more involved. I’ve been to Ferguson, Missouri four times since and one of those times I saw the racism first-hand.

“We were Maced, there was tear gas and some of the friends I went with were hit with batons by police officers.

“The police, they followed us everywhere we went in helicopters and some even put their middle fingers up to us as we were walking. So racism is still a very real thing there and very prevalent.”

Her team encouraged thousands of shoppers to patronise black-owned businesses at Christmas instead of Atlanta’s massive shopping centre, the Lenox Mall. They also managed to block part of the Atlanta highway to send the message to everyday commuters that black lives matter.

Ms Daniels’ work has also garnered attention from BET host Big Tigger, rapper Big Mike and singer Angie Stone, who shot an honorary video featuring scenes from the protests.

“It’s a huge deal to even know that people are watching and recognise what we do,” Ms Daniels said of being nominated for the Courageous Woman Award 2015. “The only reason why people today know about Emmett Till is because of his mother.

“She was extremely brave, especially in those days, to have an open casket funeral after they told her she had to keep it closed. She constantly talked about it and pursued justice for her son, which in those days was almost suicidal. So to be nominated for an award in her honour is huge for me.”

Although it might seem to some like the rallying against Ferguson has quieted down, Ms Daniels insists there are many people still fighting for change.

“The news doesn’t capture everything that has happened,” she said. “There may be those no longer following it or people who don’t know what’s going on who think it died out, but people are still doing things every day.”

She said she was always interested in activism but wasn’t able to act on that passion until a student at North Carolina’s A & T State University. There she joined an organisation called STAND, which aimed to raise awareness about genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

“That was the first time I was able to actually do something rather than just talk about it,” she said.

She and a friend Natalia Hall, recently started The CommUNITY of Atlanta Inc. It focuses on developing educational, social and economic programmes to empower people from disadvantaged communities. Members will also go into schools to teach young people about black history prior to slavery.

“We want to perform drama productions starting in the summer or fall so that children understand there were heroes around that looked just like them,” Ms Daniels said. “There is such a rich history which we are trying to highlight.”

Ms Daniels is known to wear a sweatshirt with Bermuda emblazoned across it, at protests and rally events.

She plans to bring her activism efforts back to the Island one day, but feels her efforts are needed in the US right now.

“There is this one area in Atlanta with a row of houses where all the stores there are all black-owned, but it’s all boarded up and barely running,” she said. “There are people standing on the side of the street just hanging out and not doing much. Once it starts to look different and those businesses and houses are cleaned up and those residents are empowered then that’s when I’ll know Atlanta is moving into a positive direction. That’s when I intend to bring my force back to Bermuda.”