As curfew nears, dozens lie in Downtown intersection protest
Just ahead of 10 p.m. curfew Thursday, dozens of protesters marched through Downtown Memphis, blocked an intersection and then ended the protest almost as quickly as it began. The brief, roughly 30-minute protest marked the ninth straight day of protests against police brutality in the city.
Dozens lied down at the intersection of Second Street and Dr. M.L. King Jr. Avenue about 9:40 p.m. Thursday after marching from the National Civil Rights Museum. They chanted "George Floyd" and "I can't breathe" in muted tones.
One man, Kameron Miller, stood among them with his right fist raised in the air. His left arm was in a sling.
Miller said his arm was injured Saturday night when he was arrested on Beale Street, when “the police tackled me and twisted my arm back so far they almost broke it.” Miller was among those arrested in a confrontation between police and people gathered at Beale and Main streets early Sunday morning.
About 10 minutes later the group headed back south towards the museum and the protest seemed to disband. The demonstrators were watched by about 20 police cars and a helicopter overhead.
The roughly 100 people lying in the intersection Thursday night was part protest, part practical exercise.
The protest came after hundreds gathered at the National Civil Rights Museum Thursday to game-plan and role-play civil disobedience in preparation for future protests. That gathering broke up at around 9:20 p.m. The march followed, which was led by Darin Abston.
The Thursday night protests continued the streak of organized civil disobedience in Memphis following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd died after a former Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Almost all of the Memphis protests have been largely peaceful. Thursday was no exception. In the wee hours of Monday morning, some protesters grew unruly and some businesses were damaged. That damage prompted Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland to issue a curfew Monday, which has been followed with relatively little incident for the past four days.