Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

CLEVELAND, Ohio- United States Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation's first Black and first female vice president, will attend the funeral of Tyre Nichols on Wednesday, Feb 1 in Memphis, Tennessee, her press office told Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com in a press release on Tuesday. The funeral is set to begin at 1 p.m. local time at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. The family's attorney,  famed Civil Rights Attorney Benjamin Crump, is also slated to make a call to action at the funeral as will the Rev Al Sharpton.

Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells invited the vice president, according to Harris’s press assistant, Kirsten Allen. The vice president spoke by phone with the Wells family on Tuesday, to express her condolences, which follows a call to the family from President Joe Biden last week. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, now a senior adviser to President Biden, and Mitch Landrieu, a White House senior advisor, will also attend, the White House said. Landrieu is a former mayor of New Orleans.

Nichols was stomped to death by five Black Memphis cops on Jan 7 during a traffic stop. Public records reveal that they beat him for about three minutes, punching and kicking him in the head and striking him on the back with a baton while he was restrained and crying out for his mother All five police officers have bsince been fired and indicted on a second degree murder charge. They were part of an elite special forces team called "The Scorpions," which has since been disbanded. The five officers at issue, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith, also face additional charges of aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. If convicted of second degreemurder, they face 15-60 years in prison.

After Nichol's untimely killing by police, protests against police brutality spread throughout the nation. The celebrated case has been compared to the killing in May of 2020 of George Floyd, since both of the Black men called out for their mothers while they were being killed by police.

Floyd, 46 at the time of his brutal death, was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected he may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Derek Chauvin, one of the four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for nine minutes and 29 seconds until he murdered him Like Nichols' Floyd's  murder by police also sparked nationwide protests and s heightened discussion on how police and the system do not value the lives of Black people .

Floyd's  dying words, "I can't breathe" became a rallying slogan  All four of the  Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd's killing, including Chauvin, were convicted of misbehavior and imprisoned relative to the tragic incident, Chauvin's convictions of which include murder, and the other three former cops, federal Civil Rights violations.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.