WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Thousands of people took part in a march in Washington yesterday to denounce racism, on the anniversary of the march in 1963 where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr made his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
“You might have killed the dreamer, but you can’t kill the dream,” civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton told Friday’s crowd.
Activists and politicians gave speeches, including Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who appeared in a recorded video. Many referenced U.S. Representative John Lewis, a civil rights hero who spoke at the 1963 march and died in July.
Speakers stressed the importance of voting in November’s election and links between activism for Black civil rights, disability rights and LGBT rights and against gun violence, among other causes.
“In so many ways, we stand together today in the symbolic shadow of history, but we are making history together right now,” said Martin Luther King III, Martin Luther King Jr’s son. The half-mile march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Martin Luther King Memorial, on a hot, humid day in the U.S. capital, comes amid a summer of racial unrest book-ended by two high-profile incidents in which Black men were shot by police.
Nationwide protests began in May, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an African-American man who died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
This week, protests broke out in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after police officers shot another African-American man, Jacob Blake, multiple times in front of his children. Though Blake survived, lawyers said he has been paralyzed.
“We will not be your docile slave. We will not be a footstool to oppression,” said Letetra Widman, Blake’s sister.
George Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, appeared on stage as well. At times, he stopped to collect himself, apparently overcome with emotion.
