Some laid in the street and others took a knee, blocking Blue Hill Avenue for several minutes in the late afternoon sun, to honor George Floyd, the black man who died under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer last week.
Then a vast line of protesters, many clad in black and carrying signs, wended their way from Blue Hill Avenue to Franklin Park on Tuesday evening in a rally decrying police brutality against black people.
By 5:45 p.m., thousands had gathered peacefully at the park, amid thundering applause for speakers taking the microphone. And they just kept coming.
The event, organized by the groups Violence in Boston Inc. and Black Lives Matter, comes on the seventh day of demonstrations nationwide after the killing of Floyd.