WASHINGTON – Joe Biden on Thursday suggested that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 did not have the same global impact as the recent death of George Floyd at the hands of the police.
Speaking at an economic roundtable in Philadelphia, the Democratic candidate, 77, said cellphones had changed the way people could document police brutality as television first introduced Americans to the horrors of the 1960s civil rights battle.
“Even Dr. King’s murder has no worldwide impact like the death of George Floyd,” Biden said.
“This is changing the way everyone sees this,” he said of cellphones.
“What happened to George Floyd – now you get how many people across the country, millions of cell phones. “It changes the way everyone sees this,” he continued. “Look at the millions of people marching around the world.”
“Just as television changed the Civil Rights movement for the better when they saw Bull Connor and his dogs tearing the clothes of old black women who went to church and firehosis tore the skin of young children,” Biden said.
George FloydFamily Handout
The death of Floyd, 46, at the hands of a white police officer in Minnesota who knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes has triggered mass demonstrations throughout the US and around the world.
His death sparked calls for police reform and removal of Confederate statues and offered civil rights issues ahead of the 2020 presidential battle, with Biden calling for police reform but rejecting movements within his own party to denude the police.
