MLK invoked as Tyre Nichols’ life is celebrated in song and tributes in Memphis

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

Mourners, from Vice President Kamala Harris to the activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, on Wednesday celebrated the life of Tyre Nichols, whose death at the hands of police in Memphis led to second-degree murder charges against five officers.

“Mothers around the world, when their babies are born, pray to God when they hold that child, that that body and that life will be safe for the rest of his life,” Harris said to applause during Nichols’ funeral service in a packed Memphis sanctuary.

“And when we look at this situation, this is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe.”

Nichols, 29, who was Black, was subdued yet continuously beaten after a traffic stop by Memphis police on January 7. He died three days later.

“The people of our country mourn with you,” Harris told Nichols’ family.

Sharpton, in a painfully familiar role, delivered an impassioned eulogy that paid tribute to Nichols’ life and served as a clarion call for justice.

Sharpton said he visited the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. He called out the five Black former officers charged in Nichols’ death.

“There’s nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors, that you walked through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors. You didn’t get on the police department by yourself,” Sharpton said.

If Nichols had been white, Sharpton said, “you wouldn’t have beat him like that,” referring to the five former officers.

“You don’t fight crime by becoming criminals yourself… That ain’t the police. That’s punks.”

The reverend invoked King’s 1968 “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis, where King said he had reached the peak and seen the Promised Land. The former cops accused of killing Nichols, he said, failed to live up to that legacy. “He expected you to bring us on to the Promised Land,” Sharpton said.

Mother calls for reform so no other child ‘should suffer’

RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, remembered her son as “a beautiful person” and echoed others at the celebration of life in calling for passage of the George Floyd Policing Act.

“There should be no other child that should suffer the way my son and all the other parents here (who) have lost their children,” she said.

Nichols’ older sister, Keyana Dixon, recalled looking after her younger brothers.

“With Ty, I didn’t mind,” she said. “He never wanted anything but to watch cartoons and a big bowl of cereal. So it was pretty easy to watch him.”

Dixon said all she wants is her “baby brother back.’

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Nichols’ family, said the charges against the five ex-officers in Nichols’ death set a precedent. Within 20 days of his death, the former officers were indicted on charges that included murder and kidnapping.

“We can count to 20 and every time you kill one of us on video, we’re going to say the legacy of Tyre Nichols is that we have equal justice swiftly,” he said.

His life celebrated on first day of Black History Month

For the day, mourners at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church shifted the focus from the heart-wrenching footage of the beating that Nichols in a hospital bed with his face badly swollen and bruised before his death, sparking protests across the country.

Harris was joined other senior level Biden administration officials, including White House Director for the Office of Public Engagement Keisha Lance Bottoms, former mayor of Atlanta, and Senior Adviser to the President Mitch Landrieu.

Representing other Black people killed by police, Tamika Palmer — whose daughter Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home by police during a botched raid in March 2020 — attended the service.

Also there was Philonise Floyd, the younger brother of George Floyd, whose name reverberated across the nation following his May 2020 death after an ex-cop Minneapolis cop knelt on his neck and back for more than 9 minutes.

“The family needs all the support that they can get,” Gwen Carr, whose son, Eric Garner, died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer in 2014, told CNN Wednesday before attending the service. “It’s so fresh for them but for me, it just digs into old wounds.”

The service was scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. local time but was pushed back because of bad weather and travel delays. It began shortly after 1 p.m. on the first day of Black History Month with African tribal drummers and a gospel choir.

With Nichols’ black casket, draped in a white bouquet of flowers, as a centerpiece, the young man was praised by the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner as “a good person, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being — gone too soon.”

Mourners watched slide shows of a smiling Nichols at different times in his life. A photo montage opened with a quote from Nichols: “My vision is to bring my viewers deep into what I am seeing through my eye and out through my lens.”

Tiffany Rachal, the mother of Jalen Randle, a 29-year-old Black man killed by a Houston police officer last year, offered her condolences to the family before singing, “Lord I will lift my eyes to the hills.”

On Tuesday, Sharpton and Nichols’ family gathered at the Mason Temple Church of God In Christ headquarters in Memphis — where King Jr. delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech the night before he was killed.

“We will continue in Tyre’s name to head up to Martin’s mountaintop,” Sharpton said from the “sacred ground” where MLK delivered his speech 55 years ago.

Sharpton reflected on the family’s loss as their son’s name is added to a vast pantheon of Black people who died after encounters with police.

“They will never ever recover from the loss,” Sharpton said.

Mourner carries wooden cross outside church

Before Wednesday’s service, Dan Beazley, 61, carried a towering wooden cross over his shoulder outside the Memphis church. He said he drove 12 hours — including through an ice storm — from Northville, Michigan, to pay his respects and shine a light.

Nichols has been described as a devoted son who had tattooed his mother’s name on his arm, a loving father to a 4-year-old boy, and a free spirit with a passion for skateboarding and capturing sunsets on his camera.

Public outrage over the disturbing arrest video led to firings or disciplinary action against other public servants who were at the scene, including the firings of three Memphis Fire Department personnel. Two sheriff’s deputies have been put on leave. Additionally, two more police officers have been placed on leave.

Nichols’ funeral took place less than a week after Friday evening’s public release of footage of the attack on him shook a nation long accustomed to videos of police brutality, especially against people of color.

The brutal attack sparked largely peaceful protests from New York to Los Angeles as well as renewed calls for police reform and scrutiny of specialized police units that target guns in high crime areas.

Up to 20 hours of video recordings haven’t been released, Shelby County District Attorney Steven Mulroy told CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” on Wednesday. The audio from the recordings is “probably more useful” in some cases than what the video shows, Mulroy said.

He didn’t specify what can be heard on the recordings, which he said include sound captured after the beating took place.

The release of that footage will be determined by city officials, he added.

The prosecutor said he has asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to expedite its investigation into the other emergency responders — those besides the five already indicted — to see whether any charges are warranted for them. Those people include the officers who filed the paperwork, he said.

Nichols moved to Memphis during pandemic and stayed

Nichols was the baby of his family, the youngest of four children, according to RowVaughn Wells.

He moved to Memphis from California right before the Covid-19 pandemic and remained there after the mandatory lockdowns prompted by the health crisis, his mother has said.

Nichols was a regular at a Germantown, Tennessee, Starbucks where he befriended a group of people who set aside their cellphones at a table and talked mostly about sports, particularly his beloved San Francisco 49ers.

His visits to Starbucks were typically followed by a nap before heading to a his job at FedEx. He would come home for dinner during his break.

Nichols was also a fixture among the skateboarders at Shelby Farms Park, where he photographed memorable sunsets, according to his mother.

In fact, taking pictures served as a form of self-expression that writing could never capture for Nichols, who had written on his photography website that it helped him look “at the world in a more creative way.”

He preferred capturing landscapes.

“I hope to one day let people see what i see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work,” he wrote.

Before moving to Memphis, Nichols lived in Sacramento, California, where a friend recalled that “skating gave him wings.”

On Wednesday, one song performed at the end of the service was a gospel version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

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CNN’s Christina Zdanowicz, Jamiel Lynch, Jaide Timm-Garcia, Nouran Salahieh, Nick Valencia and Melissa Alonso contributed to this report.