One hour before the city of Memphis released videos of police fatally beating Tyre Nichols on Friday, Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens joined leaders from cities and states across the country condemning the officers’ actions.
Why it matters: The Memphis footage prompted emotional responses from people around the country, but in the ever-changing South, they were also painful reminders of a shared past, and a complicated future.
- “Atlanta and Memphis have a shared history: Atlanta is the birthplace of Dr. King, and Memphis is where he was killed by an assassin,” Dickens said in a video shared to his social feeds. “This is yet another time where we all have to bear witness to the loss of life at the hands — loss of Black life, a Black man dying — at the hands of law enforcement.”
“Memphis. I know about a tragedy in Memphis,” tweeted Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. “My heart goes out to that city.””
Driving the news: Demonstrators marched solemnly and peacefully over the weekend in cities throughout the South — Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta. In each place they chanted names of local people killed in altercations with police, like Darryl Williams in Raleigh or Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte.
- And in Atlanta, the demonstrations came at a pressure point in the city’s policing history, after clashes between law enforcement and protesters of the so-called “Cop City” police training facility turned deadly earlier this month. Gov. Brian Kemp issued a state of emergency last week.
The big picture: The South is strung together by paved highways and a barbed history, spicy…
Read the full article here
