Mary Jo Laupp wasn’t expecting a video she posted in frustration on the social media platform TikTok would go viral by the next morning, but that’s exactly what happened.

President Donald Trump had announced that he was planning to hold a campaign rally — his first since the COVID-19 pandemic began — in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last Friday.

“I was watching a lot of black content creators vent their own frustrations on various social media platforms because of the choice of Juneteenth and Tulsa for a presidential campaign rally,” Laupp, who worked for Democrat Pete Buttigieg’s campaign leading up to the Iowa Caucuses, explained.

Juneteenth, June 19, is the holiday celebrated in honor of the news of the Emancipation Proclamation reaching the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.

Tulsa was the home of Black Wall Street, one of the most successful and affluent black-majority communities in the country. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, the community was burned to the ground in a race massacre.

“In light of what’s been going on, in light of the fact that there have been some staff members at the White House with questionable behaviors regarding race, it just seemed like a tone deaf choice,” Laupp said.

She said that while she doesn’t believe anyone with the Trump campaign intentionally scheduled the event to occur on Juneteenth and in a city with a dark past of racial violence, they didn’t think it through.

Laupp filmed the TikTok, a 60-second video where she shared how to request free tickets to the campaign event using a cell phone number, then not show up to the rally and unsubscribe to the campaign calls and texts, late on June 11.

“I was just kind of frustrated and just sort of vented real quick,” she said. “And then all of a sudden, the next morning, my follower numbers had tripled and that video was getting hundreds of views and thousands of comments.”

Since then, the video has had hundreds of thousands of views, comments and shares on the social media platform. And though the Trump campaign changed the date of the rally to Saturday, the arena was only half full, according to published reports.

“It obviously struck a chord and it turned into this big no-show protest,” Laupp said.

Laupp said she was shocked when the video went viral. When media outlets began reaching out, she decided to use her platform to talk about the history of Black Wall Street and Juneteenth, “which I had never learned about in school, and a lot of people haven’t,” she said.

Though Laupp’s TikTok protest was shared far and wide, she acknowledges that it likely wasn’t the only factor leading to the lower-than-expected turnout for Saturday’s rally.

“I think COVID-19 had something to do with it,” she said. “Oklahoma is an open carry state and I think there had been some people who had been open about threatening to hurt protesters that showed up.”

Over the past week, Laupp’s video has gotten a lot of attention from Trump supporters, as well. Many found out that she works for the Fort Dodge Community School District as a colorguard coach, musical director and choir accompanist at Fort Dodge Senior High. Some have made Twitter posts and Facebook comments calling for her termination from the district.

Laupp said she’s not worried about the district firing her over the video, which she said was expressing her First Amendment rights.

“I have a lot of parents behind me, I know I have some colleagues that are very supportive of what I did,” she said. “Do I think it could cost me my job? If it does, it does. I don’t regret what I did at all.”

Laupp said she hopes her story of her video going viral will inspire young people to speak up and use social media and other tech platforms to be involved in politics and civics.

“I think that they realize that they don’t have to give up their jobs and work for a campaign and be on the road for six months,” she said. “They have tools already at their disposal to connect with others and make a difference and I think that’s huge.”