Remembering June 19th, Nashville Policing History, and BLACK LIVES MATTER!

“It was on June 19th that the Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and Black communities were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. For our people, freedom in this country has always been hard-fought and much-delayed.”

Coretta Scott King said, ‘Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.’”

“Right now, uprisings are taking place in all 50 states demanding that police officers be held accountable for the murders of Black folks, putting pressure on elected officials to Defund The Police and instead invest in the people and community control.” 

In Nashville, we remember the July 2018 killing (officer indicted on 1st degree murder charges) of Daniel Hambrick, and the February 2017 killing of Jocques Clemmons. “Soon after the (Clemmons) shooting, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to take over the police department's investigation into Clemmons' death, establishing a new precedent in Nashville.” (Tennessean)

“The Movement for Black Lives, and our accomplices, are taking action on Juneteenth weekend,   June 19-21. We are turning up digitally and from our homes, in our local communities, and mobilizing nationally.”