Pictured are former Minneapolis police officer Derek  Chauvin, Chauvin's Black murder victim George Floyd, , Cleveland activist Samaria Rice, and Rice's late son, Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Black boy whom a White Cleveland cop gunned down in November of 2014 in less than two seconds

Led by Black Lives Matter Cleveland and Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old police killing victim Tamir Rice, Cleveland's rally drew a small but anxious crowd and was billed as a George Floyd rally on Tamir's birthday, which was also on Friday.

After leading chants, the older Rice called for the U.S. Department of Justice to re-open the investigation into her son's vicious murder in November of 2014 and is fighting against the reinstatement of former Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, who was fired for lying on his employment application but not for the two-second murder of a Black boy who was carrying a toy gun at a city park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side of town.

Chauvin, 45, was held to a different standard than the average White cop that goes free after gunning down or otherwise killing unarmed Blacks like in Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, LA, and so many other majority Black major American cities. He was convicted on all three counts in April and housed in a minimum security prison until sentencing. He did not react when he was sentenced on Friday before Judge Peter Cahill, who last month agreed with prosecutors that aggravating factors in Floyd's death warranted going above the guidelines.

Under Minnesota law, he faced up to 40 years in prison for  second-degree unintentional murder conviction, 25 years for third-degree murder, and 10 years for second-degree manslaughter. Prosecutors had asked for 30 years while Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, wanted probation and less prison time for his client.

Sentencing guidelines suggested a sentence of 15-30 years and Minnesota law requires that he serve at least two-thirds of his sentence.

Activists, Black leaders and Civil Rights organizations across the nation and Floyd's family and the family's attorneys say the sentence was in the least unfair, and racist.

Floyd family attorney Benjamin Crump, who was the lead lawyer that brought home a $27 million wrongful death settlement for Floyd's family, said Floyd may be dead at the hands of an unmerciful White cop, but his spirit  lives on.

“The legend will still live on. George isn’t here but his spirit is still here Breonna Taylor is not here, but her spirit is still here. Eric Garner isn’t here but his spirit is still here,” Crump said.

Chauvin has two federal indictments pending and did not speak or show remorse at sentencing, and his attorneys say he will appeal.

May 25th marked the one-year anniversary of the murder of Floyd, who was Black, by Chauvin, who murdered him by holding his leg on his neck for more the nine minutes following an arrest, and as by-standers looked in disbelief and videoed the celebrated incident on their cell phones.

Floyd left behind two children.

Three other officers at the scene, all three of whom await trial on charges of felony aiding and abetting and were fired relative to the incident as Chauvin was, did nothing to stop the gruesome attack. Like Chauvin, they have also been indicted federally and have all three pleaded not guilty.

They face a trial tentatively scheduled for March 2022.

Hundreds of people, led by Floyd's surviving family members, Floyd and Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, gathered for the rally in front of the courthouse in downtown Minneapolis where the Chauvin was tried after his murder and other convictions in April, many carrying signs with pictures of Floyd, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and other Black men and women killed in encounters with police.

The jury deliberated for just 10 hours before reaching its unprecedented verdict.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement after the jury verdict that the justice department’s federal civil rights investigation into the death of George Floyd “is ongoing."

And Minnesota Gov Tim Waltz said that "it's an important step towards justice for Minnesota, trial’s over, but here in Minnesota, I want to be very clear, we know our work just begins."

NAACP President Derrick Johnson also released a statement celebrating the verdict.

Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation's first Black vice president and a former prosecutor and state attorney general, spoke out after the verdict in the celebrated case, Harris calling it justice delivered and Biden saying "no one should be above the law and today's verdict sends that message."

Harris said that the pain in the Black community relative to the police murder of George Floyd and so many other Blacks like him still lingers.

"Today we feel a sigh of relief" said Vice President Harris during a press conference after the guilty verdict in the state's case. "Still it cannot take away the pain."

Even the national president of Chauvin's police union celebrated the verdict in the case of a cop gone bad whose peers and supervisors became key witnesses for the prosecution at his trial, a trial that legal experts said was won from the beginning with a video of the entire incident taken by a by-standard.

"We were one of the first organization's to step forward and say this just doesn't look right." said Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Arrested on a forgery charge over a $20 bill, Floyd pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe when Chauvin murdered him over a year ago before an astonished crowd of people, some in the crowd hollering for him to ease up on his excessive force against Floyd, but to no avail.

He was pronounced dead an hour later at an area hospital. Protests, some punctuated with hostile riots, immediately broke out in  Minneapolis and quickly spread to over 2,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, including in Cleveland.

Black Lives Matter activists led Cleveland's protest last on May 30 in 2020 where angry protesters rioted and tore up  downtown Cleveland, destroying businesses, burning up police cruisers, and writing graphic graphite laced with profanity on landmark federal and state buildings.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a criminal justice reform bill, remains pending in Congress.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black and alternative digital newspaper in Ohio. 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.

Pictured is Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and first Black vice president of America: Clevelandurbannews.com and-Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Vice President Kamala Harris, America's first woman and first Black vice president, will visit the Mexico-U.S. border this week, her first trip to that particular border and one that follows criticism that the vice president was avoiding such a trip even after returning earlier this month from her first foreign trip as vice president, a three-day visit to Guatemala and Mexico.

The Mexico–United States border is an international border separating Mexico and the U.S. that extends from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east.

Harris, 56 and a Democrat, had said that she would visit the border in due time and that there is no quick fix to the influx of Central American migrants to the U.S.

A former California attorney general and U.S. senator, she said there’s a reason people are arriving at our border and that it is prudent in the least to "ask what is that reason and then identify the problem so we can fix it.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing during the height of the controversy that the vice president was doing what President Joe Biden assigned her to do relative to the immigration controversy, and that Harris was  focused on foreign policy in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvado.

But those critical of the situation, mainly Republicans, wanted more answers as pressure mounted for the Biden administration to do more on the U.S.-Mexico border fiasco.

The president has since changed his tone and will send Harris to the border this week, a decision that follows criticism also by Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei, who said,  after meeting with Harris earlier this month, that the Biden administration and Democrats in general are responsible for the border crisis in his country as it relates to the U.S .

The controversy over the initial reluctance of President Biden to visit the Mexico-U.S. border or to send Harris in his place has racial overtones, critics say, at least where Harris is concerned, and it comes as Congressional Republicans cry that the Biden administration is soft on immigration and responsible for an influx of migrants along the southern border.

U.S. border agents reportedly detained some 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February alone, with nearly a 70 percent increase in that amount in April,  U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows, the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019.

The numbers just keep getting worse, data show, the worst figures in some 20 years.

Immigration advocates say it is partly because America provides a more viable alternative to their poverty and crime ridden homelands, even with its substandard and often illegal wages.

Foes warn that the crisis of illegal border crossing heightens crime in the U.S.

U.S. immigration policy has suddenly become a testing ground on how the vice president handles foreign policy matters amid increased scrutiny from some mainstream media pundits and from policy makers both inside and out of her political party.

Republicans say the Biden administration has watered down immigration policies in place under the former president Donald  Trump's administration while Democrats argue that Trump's immigration policies were racist and anti-Democratic, and that they marginalized women, children, and people of color.

Harris ran for president last year, and later vice president on the Democratic ticket.

She is the first woman of color to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America.

On the campaign trail for her unsuccessful bid for president she had a tone amenable to the nation's immigrant community as she pushed immigration reform policies.

Biden later tapped her to run for vice president on his presidential ticket.