Souvenir vendors offered T-shirts, signs, buttons and posters as people walked through security barricades surrounding the Capitol and other buildings to join the rally, themed “Justice or Else”.
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The Metropolitan Police Department and the D.C. Department of Transportation announced on Saturday morning a number of street closures near the National Mall for the march.
“Twenty years ago, the death of Tamir Rice would have fallen on deaf ears, left for the police to write a false report, and not broadcast for the world to know”, Tamika Mallory, one of the organizers, said, referring to the police shooting last year of a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio.
Authorities said Bland hanged herself in July in a Texas jail cell after a traffic stop, but her family disputes those findings.
U.S. President Barack Obama was famously in attendance at the Million Man March in 1995, as reported by the Jewish Daily Forward. Me and my friends from Howard and one of my closest friends who came to visit from my hometown of Detroit all went down to the March as proud black men.
Led by Nation of Islam leader, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March will highlight several of the unarmed black men and children who have been killed by the hands of law enforcement and those whose deaths were denied rightful justice despite overwhelming evidence.
Before a quiet crowd on the lawn outside of the Capitol, Farrakhan, sometimes a controversial figure, said people must appreciate and love themselves more.
“You play with the lives of poor people, indigenous people, black people, women”, Farrakhan said, referring to the government.
“I really just wanted see a million black men together for a peaceful reason, and I wanted to be able to support the cause”, said the owner of Luxury Chariots Taxi Service.
He also said that if things don’t change in the black community, participating in the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March is just ‘vanity’. If you share your vote on Twitter, using #MTBuzzys, then you will be automatically entered in our contest to win a $25 Amazon gift card. The National Park Service, who published the low 400,000 estimate above, declined to provide an estimate of the size of crowds at today’s event.
Farrakhan, 82, spoke to the crowd on the National Mall in Washington and reflected on the importance of passing the torch to the next generation.
Life has improved in a few ways for African-American men since the original march, but not in others.
For example, the unemployment rate for African-American men in October 1995 was 8.1 per cent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In September 2015 it was 8.9 percent.
Farrakhan, 82, called for 10,000 men to help address crime in the African-American community.
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For a few, it was a return to Washington after the Million Man March on October. 16, 1995, and a chance to expose their children to the same positive experience the first march represented to them.
