/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/Y3PEHDODGVBZXG4RD5YXQF7AZY.jpg "Minneapolis nonprofit visits Montgomery, Civil Rights Trail")
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – A novel group of vacationers visited Montgomery this week. Members of the McKnight Basis from Minneapolis, Minnesota, have been on the town to see a few of Alabama’s wealthy historical past.
They booked their tour with Montgomery-based vacation spot administration firm Civil Rights Path Excursions, a company bringing guests to the state from everywhere in the nation.
“It’s our aim to ensure that we maintain this a part of American historical past alive, particularly our Black historical past and tradition,” mentioned Civil Rights Path Excursions President Leon Burnette.
Because the birthplace of each the Confederacy and the Civil Rights motion, tourism is a big financial driver for Montgomery.
“It not solely makes a monetary impression, however it makes an impression on our model and what we’re in a position to do after we’re recruiting companies and we’re recruiting expertise,” mentioned Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed.
It’s why there’s an enormous push by metropolis leaders to promote the town as a historic vacationer vacation spot, and Civil Rights Path Excursions is hoping to just do that.
“Our mission is to attempt to unfold a constructive gentle on Montgomery, in addition to inform the reality in regards to the civil rights period and what occurred in Montgomery,” mentioned Civil Rights Path Excursions Vice President Steve Myers. “It’s not all the time going to be a pleasing expertise, as a result of the reality isn’t a pleasing expertise on a regular basis. Over the previous couple of months, now we have actually been in a position to contact some individuals.”
The tour firm has lately hosted college students from Massachusetts, Chicago, and New York. This week, they took the McKnight Basis to the Legacy Museum, Nationwide Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights Path.
“All of it got here out of George Floyd’s incident in Minnesota the place they’re from, and so they’re attempting to get a brand new perspective on the place this world is headed,” Myers mentioned.
McKnight Basis President Tonya Allen mentioned they plan to take what they discovered and use the information to assist rebuild their metropolis.
“We consider that this expertise goes to deepen our appreciation and understanding of the way to good that work, and we predict that the Civil Rights Path tour is a vital a part of that have,” Allen mentioned.
It’s that very same historical past and tradition the town is hoping will draw in additional individuals to the world. The McKnight Basis was based by William McKnight, a frontrunner of 3M, a Fortune 500 manufacturing firm.
You possibly can study extra in regards to the Civil Rights Path Excursions right here.
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Aug. 20 (UPI) — An ex-Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in the 2020 killing of George Floyd has been released from federal prison, according to news reports.
Thomas Lane, 41, served his time at a low-security facility in Littleton, Colo., and officials previously had said he would go into supervision for a year after being released, according to officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He is the first of four ex-Minneapolis officers in the incident to finish his sentence and be released.
The federal portion of his prison time was completed in April but he stayed behind bars to satisfy a state sentence for aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, a BOP spokesperson told Star Tribune in Minnesota.
Lane, who appeared on scene with three other Minneapolis officers at the time of Floyd’s arrest and killing, already was serving a 30-month sentence in Colorado after he was convicted in July 2022 of violating Floyd’s civil rights. That conviction came for when former officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd on May 25, 2020, in south Minneapolis.
In May that year, Lane pleaded guilty in Hennepin County to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death and given his 2.5 year sentence.
Floyd, who was Black, died during an arrest when Chauvin knelt on the back of his neck for almost 10 minutes.
Lane was a fourth generation Minneapolis PD officer on his fourth day in the job when his career came to a screeching halt as a result of the incident. Notably, Lane was the only officer of the four to express any concern at the time over Floyd’s inability to breathe, later riding in the ambulance with an unresponsive Floyd while administering chest compressions in a futile attempt to revive him.
Cellphone video footage shows that Lane held Floyd down by his legs while other officers stood watch over a disapproving crowd. Despite repeated pleas for air, Chauvin did not let up which ultimately caused Floyd’s death.
Floyd’s killing at the hands of law enforcement galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and sparked fierce nationwide protests that toppled numerous Civil War relics, Confederate statues and other historical monuments to slavery.
The incident then lead an angry crowd not long after Floyd’s death to set fire to a Minneapolis police precinct.
Chauvin was sentenced to more than 20 years last year after a jury convicted him of murder and manslaughter. He later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights and is due to be released in 2038.
J. Alexander Kueng pleaded guilty to manslaughter and is serving a 3.5 year sentence.
Tou Thao, convicted of second-degree aiding and abetting manslaughter, is serving a nearly five-year sentence.
Violent crime tends to pick up in summer months, and in July, Minneapolis recorded nine homicides, totaling 43 on the year, according to a Star Tribune database. A downturn since then now has the city just under last year’s count through Aug. 13. But homicides here remain up by two-thirds from 2019.
St. Paul is somewhat similar, showing 16 homicides this year compared to 21 last year through July, according to a Star Tribune database. That database does not stretch back to 2019, but according to police, who track homicides differently, the city recorded 13 through July that year.
That the Twin Cities have shown declines in homicides but are yet to return to pre-pandemic numbers is common among American cities.
Two-thirds of the 29 cities studied for homicide trends by the Council on Criminal Justice have not returned to pre-pandemic numbers, the report said. The Twin Cities were not included in the homicide study.
Homicides nationally are down 13% from last year and are just under 2019 levels. That’s largely because of significant drops in big cities that tend to have higher homicide counts.
If the trend can hold, a return to 2019 levels would mark a significant milestone considering homicides jumped by nearly a third in 2020, the biggest single-year leap in U.S. history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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