Rev. Al Sharpton Announces National March at George Floyd’s Funeral

Rev. Sharpton announce the August 28th March on Washington

Story by National Action Network

Sharpton Announces National March at George Floyd’s Funeral

During his eulogy at the memorial for George Floyd—the unarmed Black man who was killed by police—Reverend Al Sharpton announced plans for a historic march in Washington, D.C. to call attention to criminal justice reform and an end to racial profiling and the systemic mistreatment of African-Americans and other minoritized groups.

The march comes in the wake of the killing of Mr. Floyd and a litany of other race-based killings of Black men and women throughout the country including Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. National Action Network has been working with the families to secure justice in all of these cases.

The march will take place on August 28, 2020 the 57th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was on that hot summer day in 1963 that the world heard Dr. King’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech.

As political leaders, celebrities and activists from across the country gathered to mourn the life of Mr. Floyd on Thursday, Reverend Sharpton announced that Martin Luther King III—the eldest son of the civil rights icon—would serve as a co-convener of the August march.

“That’s where your father stood, in the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial and said, ‘I Have a Dream,'” Reverend Sharpton told Martin III, who attended the memorial service with his wife Andrea and their daughter Yolanda.

The march—which has already made national headlines—will be a powerful protest gathering, aimed at ushering in a new era of civil rights — one that focuses on police and criminal justice accountability. Reverend Sharpton said that the tactics of the march will acknowledge and operate within the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who used civil disobedience and protests marches to fight back against the vicious legacy of white supremacy.

“We’re going back this Aug. 28 to restore and recommit this dream,” Reverend Sharpton said. “To stand up, because just like at one era we had to fight slavery, another era we had to fight Jim Crow, another era we dealt with voting rights. This is the era to deal policing and criminal justice.”

Reverend Sharpton pointed to legislative and policy issues that National Action Network, working in concert with other civil rights groups including the NAACP, National Urban League, the Black Woman’s Round Table, and others, will advocate for leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond. Amongst these issues are plans to push for full police background checks as well as the use of consent decrees, which will allow the U.S. Justice Department to audit and take over police departments that have demonstrated a history of misconduct.