Thousands Gather For March On Washington To Demand Police Reform And Racial Equality

Thousands of demonstrators braved sweltering temperatures in the nation's capital on Friday to demand an overhaul of the country's criminal justice system and push for racial equality.

The event, called the Commitment March, was held at the Lincoln Memorial, the same site where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called for those same reforms decades ago in his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.

Like the 1963 March on Washington, organizers opened with a series of speeches before attendees began to march through the streets of the city, this time ending at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

This event – dubbed "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" — comes at a particularly tense time as frustration over police brutality and use of force have sparked national outrage following the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.