HOUSTON — Rev. William Lawson, a man who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement, called for people marching in downtown Houston on Tuesday to continue to make their voices heard.
“You need to make noise,” Lawson said. “You’ve been quiet for a long time.”
Tens of thousands marched from Discovery Green to Houston City Hall to honor George Floyd and protest the injustice surrounding his death. Floyd, a black Houston man, was killed May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck.
During his nearly 10-minute speech, Lawson told the crowd that “it’s not just black people who are angry; it is the world that is angry.”
“You have been heard. Maybe nobody had heard you before, but with the death of this one simple Houston man, you have been heard,” Lawson said. “I see you are determined not just to arrest these three officers but to change these United States.”
Lawson, 91, helped organize the civil rights movement in Houston, and who founded the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in the Third Ward.
Lawson has been “deeply involved in advocacy activities for African Americans, for Hispanics, for women and for the poor,” according to his biography on the church’s website.
At Tuesday’s march, Lawson told all attendees to stay mobilized and called for people to vote President Donald Trump out of office.
“I’m up here simply to say to you: keep mobilized,” he said. “Don’t let this be a one-day parade; keep mobilized and get ready to vote, vote, vote.”
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