Civil rights activists gather in D.C. for anniversary of March on Washington
Thousands of protesters, civil rights advocates and the families of several African Americans killed by law enforcement this year, gathered in the nation’s capital Friday to mark the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington while denouncing police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S.
The 1963 march, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I have a dream” speech, was a historic turning point in American history, but dozens of speakers who addressed the crowd near the Lincoln Memorial on Friday said racial equality is still a work in progress.
The rally, dubbed “Commitment March: Get Your
Knee Off Our Necks,” comes less than a week after another Black man was shot by a white police officer in a caught-on-tape incident that has fueled an unprecedented sports boycott and a wave of nightly protests. The 29-year-old father of six, Wisconsin resident Jacob Blake, may never be able to walk again after he was shot in the back seven times Sunday in the city of Kenosha.
“There is a knee upon the neck of democracy and our nation can only live so long without the oxygen of freedom,” Martin Luther King III, the late civil rights leader’s oldest living child, told march attendees Friday.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, whose National Action Network organized the march in partnership with the NAACP, announced the event while speaking at George Floyd’s funeral in June. Floyd’s Memorial Day death while in the custody of Minneapolis cops, including one who knelt on his neck for nearly eight minutes, set off a wave of demonstrations against institutional racism that swept the country through the summer.
“We need to have a conversation about racism,” Sharpton told the crowd.
“We did not come to start trouble. We came to stop trouble,” he said. “You act like it’s no trouble to shoot us in the back. You act like it’s no trouble to put a chokehold on us while we scream ‘I can’t breathe.’ You act like it’s no trouble to hold a man on the ground to squeeze the life out of him. It’s time for a new conversation.”
The turnout Friday was much smaller than the original March on Washington, which drew more than 200,000 people, because of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting social distancing restrictions. Event organizers urged participants to wear masks and spread out as much as possible, but many in the crowd did not cover their faces or keep a safe distance from each other.
Marchers also faced extremely high heat, with temperatures in the low 90s Friday afternoon. Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, had a “little heat exhaustion” during the event, Sharpton announced at one point, though she appeared to be OK.
Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., urged Black Americans to “stand up” and fight against institutional racism.
“There are two systems of justice in the United States. There’s a white system and there’s a black system. The black system ain’t doing so well,” he said.
“We’re tired,” he told the crowd. “I’m tired of looking at cameras and seeing these young Black and Brown people suffer.”