Juneteenth protest in Greeley calls for racial bias audit of police department
By Kelly Ragan
When Devin Tremell spoke into a microphone on Juneteenth, he didn’t do so with a large organization behind him, like Black Lives Matter or NAACP.
Tremell, a local hip-hop artist and former University of Northern Colorado student wanted to show people they could still make a difference by showing up.
“I’m just someone who cares,” Tremell said.
Devin Tremell speaks during a protest June 19, 2020 at Lincoln Park in downtown Greeley. Photo by Joshua Polson.
On June 19, more than 200 people gathered to march from the UNC to Lincoln Park to call for an end to police brutality. It was the fourth major peaceful protest in Greeley since George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police May 25.
Tremell told the crowd his great great grandmother was a slave.
Tremell, whose full name is Devin Tremell Fuller, said he was also related to Robert Fuller, a young Black man found hanging from a tree near Palmdale City Hall in California following weeks of protests over Floyd’s death.
According to a report in the LA Times, authorities initially suspected his death was a suicide, but later ordered an autopsy.
Tremell spoke about his own experiences being racially profiled in Greeley. He also called for a racial bias audit of the Greeley Police Department.
Protestors march down 11th Avenue on June 19, 2020 in Greeley. Photo by Joshua Polson.
Several others, also part of the northern Colorado hip-hop community, spoke on their own experiences and pain experiencing racism in their community.
At the protest, Tremell said he’d been going to larger protests in Denver, but then he wondered what he could do locally.
“I’ve paid rent and taxes here for six years,” Tremell said. “There’s no need to go to Denver, it happens everywhere. I’ve had racial profiling issues here…I’m Black, my life matters. I’m here.”
The protest was held on Juneteenth.
Juneteenth got its name combining “June” and “19.” It celebrates the day Union General Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas to tell enslaved African-Americans they’d been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two and a half years previously, according to the New York Times.
Protestors hold their hands up as they chant and march down 11th Avenue on June 19, 2020 in downtown Greeley. Photo by Joshua Polson.
The reasons for the delay aren’t entirely clear. Stories range from the messenger getting murdered on the way to Texas to deliver the news, to slaveholders deliberately withholding the information, according to Juneteenth.com.
“The Black community celebrates June 19th as the day the first slaves in the south were set free, and yet we do not have equality in this country,” Tremell wrote in the protest’s Facebook event. “Together we will display pain or frustration so we can begin to make a change. We aren’t here for a single person or isolated incident, but as members of that same community that will not tolerate racism and injustice.”