MANKATO, Minn. — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opined in his famous 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail that there is no such thing as a perfect time to protest racial injustice.
“For years now,” King wrote, “I have heard the word, ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant, ‘Never.’ We must come to see …a that justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
Nearly 60 years later, Southern Minnesota did not wait to demand justice following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Within three days of the 46-year-old black man’s death at the hands of a white police officer, both Mankato and St. Peter had joined a national wave of resistance. Roughly 80 miles from the street where Floyd’s neck was pinned down by Derek Chauvin’s knee, thousands marched over bridges, into parks and through city squares, braving the COVID-19 pandemic to call out police brutality, systemic racism and the senseless loss of another darker-skinned human being.
“For years now,” King wrote, “I have heard the word, ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant, ‘Never.’ We must come to see …a that justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
Nearly 60 years later, Southern Minnesota did not wait to demand justice following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Within three days of the 46-year-old black man’s death at the hands of a white police officer, both Mankato and St. Peter had joined a national wave of resistance. Roughly 80 miles from the street where Floyd’s neck was pinned down by Derek Chauvin’s knee, thousands marched over bridges, into parks and through city squares, braving the COVID-19 pandemic to call out police brutality, systemic racism and the senseless loss of another darker-skinned human being.
