On Wednesday, July 6, 2016, police shot and killed Philando Castile in the St. Paul, Minnesota suburb of Falcon Heights. A 32-year-old Black man, Mr. Castile, according to reports, was shot three to five times by police with his girlfriend in the car. He was stopped because of a busted tail light. His death at the hands of police comes just a day after the fatal police shooting of 37-year-old father of five Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
To commemorate the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the 134 other Black people who have been killed by police in 2016 thus far, we revisit the stories of the countless people of color who were killed before them. At the 2015 Movement for Black Lives Convening, dozens of Black men and women whose relatives died at the hands of the police spoke, from Michael Brown’s father, to the mothers of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, to the uncle of Oscar Grant, and many more. Family member after family member got up and spoke to attendees about their loved ones in one of the most emotional moments of the convening. Today, we’ll listen to those testimonies and more moving speeches from the event.