Yahoo News “George Floyd’s Life Mattered”: Meghan Markle Voices Support For Black Lives Matter In High School Address
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Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, has added her voice to the global outcry over the death of George Floyd in a heartfelt graduation message to Los Angeles’ Immaculate Heart High School.
Speaking to students at the school she once attended, she said: “As we’ve all seen over the last week what is happening in our country and in our state and in our home town of L.A. has been absolutely devastating… George Floyd’s life mattered, and Breonna Taylor’s life mattered, and Philando Castile’s life mattered, and Tamir Rice’s life mattered, and so did so many other people whose names we don’t know. Stephon Clark. His life mattered.”
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Markle, who now lives in LA with husband Prince Harry, said she was nervous about how she should express her support for the Black Lives Matter movement. “I wanted to say the right thing. And I was really nervous that I wouldn’t, or that it would get picked apart, and I realized that the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing,” she said.
She also recalled her memory of the 1992 LA Riots following the arrest of Rodney King. “I was 11 or 12 years old and it was the LA Riots, which was also triggered by a senseless act of racism,” she said. “I remember the curfew and I remember rushing back home and on that drive home, seeing ash fall from the sky and smelling the smoke and seeing the smoke billow out of buildings… I remember seeing men in the back of a van just holding guns and rifles. I remember pulling up to the house and seeing the tree, that had always been there, completely charred. And those memories don’t go away.”
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