Dallas vigil to remember black lives lost to police is peaceful, healing, mournful
Mourners were wrapped in smoke in from burning sage at a vigil Sunday meant to honor African-Americans who have long since died.
The burning sage, one woman said, was meant to repel negative energies that might disrupt the ceremony.
The vigil was at the Freedman’s African Memorial Park and Cemetery, which surrounds a statue of a black man and woman newly freed and in pain. The gathering was to give the community an opportunity to heal from the pain of police brutality and the deaths that have resulted over the years.
As peaceful, soft guitar music played, the calm reading of the names of the dead stood in sharp contrast to the images of cities afire that have been shown on national news broadcasts the past three days.
People took to the streets of Dallas on Sunday for the third day of protests against police brutality and the killings of black people by police, sparked by the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25.
Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the street when Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes as Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. Chauvin was later charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.
The city of Dallas has divested resources from African-American communities every single day and people are justifiably angry, said Mercedes Fulbright, one of the organizers of the event. Black people have been living through a pandemic for the past 400 years and every single day, the police have “been on our necks,” Fulbright said.
“I think it’s important to not see this as an isolated event,” Fulbright said. “I’m from south Dallas and we are resilient, we are trying to survive and doing it in ways that keep us grounded. We’re just pausing to heal, we’re just pausing to mourn, and we’ll be right back in the streets. George Floyd is not new, Atatiana Jefferson is not new. They’ve been taking our lives, literally, since they started kidnapping us from Africa. This isn’t over. The fight is still going.”
About 300 protesters gathered at Klyde Warren Park around 5 p.m., chanting “no justice, no peace” and “I can’t breathe.”
Some dropped to a knee and repeated “Black lives matter” and the names of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black EMT who was fatally shot by Louisville, Ky., police in her apartment.
Protesters then marched down Harwood Street past the Dallas Museum of Art as police, following in cruisers, told them to stay on the sidewalk.
Violence Friday, Saturday
The Dallas protest on Saturday afternoon started out nonviolent. Marchers chanted things like “Say his name: George Floyd,” “Black lives matter,” and “No justice, no peace, no [expletive] racist police.” At times, the procession stretched six or seven blocks through downtown.
But at around 4:30 p.m., police began firing tear gas canisters into the crowd in front of City Hall after some protesters on bikes stood in front of a SWAT vehicle and tried to block it. Officers began ordering the crowd to disperse. Many protesters ran, but some threw the tear gas canisters back at officers as the crowd cheered.
More than 20 cities across the U.S. have set curfews following days of protests mired by vandalism and destruction, and city leaders in Dallas imposed a 7 p.m. curfew for parts of the city on Sunday.
One woman in Dallas was walking home with groceries on Saturday when police shot her in the forehead with some sort of pellet, causing blood to stream down her face and onto her dress. She told reporters that she was not protesting.
Protests in Dallas on Friday night started similarly peaceful, but later a small group of protesters blocked traffic and clashed with police, who wore riot gear and carried shields. Windows were smashed and storefronts looted in Deep Ellum.
This story was originally published May 31, 2020 at 6:24 PM.
