Volunteers paint the phrase Black Lives Matter on Washington Street, Sunday, July 5, 2020, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
Volunteers using yellow paint began filling in a Black Lives Matter street mural on Sunday, a day after hundreds of people used the Fourth of July holiday to call for justice on behalf of Black victims of police violence.
Demonstrators carried signs saying "Defund The Police" and "Say Her Name" as they marched from Roxbury's Nubian Square to the Boston Common on Saturday. The "Say Her Name March & Rallye" focused on Black women, including Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician killed by police in her home in Louisville, Kentucky.
"We're marching through to say your lives were not in vain. We're saying you have dignity, you have worth, you have value, and you matter to us,'' activist Karlene Griffiths Sekou told the crowd.
Black demonstrators noted that ancestors who were slaves weren't free on the Fourth of July, a theme that was referenced by U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, who joined the demonstrators.
"We know that when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence, he did not mean to include Black men and Black women in our country," Markey said. The country has "a long way to go to make sure that everyone is able to enjoy equal justice under the law," he added.
The Black Lives Matter mural was being painted across a stretch of Washington Street near Nubian Square.
The stenciling of letters began on Saturday and volunteers began filling the letters with yellow paint on Sunday.
