“What has happened to the dream?” he asked. “In the city where the dreamer laid down and shed his blood, you have the unmitigated gall to beat your brother, to chase him down and beat him some more.”
Sharpton compared the attack to the biblical story of Joseph, whose brothers threw him in a pit.
“No empathy, no concern,” said the president and founder of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization. “Nobody came to help him, like nobody came to help Tyre.”
Citing the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Sharpton noted that some civil rights struggles lasted for years. The key, he said, is not the time they take, but the necessity of the reforms.
“It’s not about a timetable; it’s that we cannot continue to live under these double standards and under these conditions,” he said. “We don’t care how long, but I can tell you one thing: Those of you that keep voting against that bill, we’re going to vote against you. We got more numbers than the police union.”
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Near the conclusion of the funeral, members of Nichols’ family stood before the congregation, with one sister describing losing faith when she lost her brother and another reading a poem about her brother saying to the officers, “I’m just trying to go home” and how “God replied, ‘Come home, my son. Now you can rest.’”
His mother, RowVaughn Wells, described her son as a “beautiful person” and expressed thanks for worldwide support before sounding a similar theme, as the poem did, about divine decisions.
“I guess now his assignment is done and he’s been taken home,” she said, dabbing her eyes during her brief remarks.
Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Nichols’ family, issued a “call to action” for continuing work to recognize the humanity of their loved one.
“Why couldn’t they see the humanity in Tyre?” he asked about the Memphis police officers. “Because we have to make sure they see us as human beings. And once we acknowledge that we’re human beings worthy of respect and justice, then we have the God-given right to say I am a human being and I deserve justice. Not just any justice, but equal justice. And that’s what we’re going to get for Tyre Nichols — equal justice.”
This article originally appeared here.
