Leslie Batson, a white office administrator from Maryland, joined the thousands of marchers protesting the killing of George Floyd in Washington, last weekend after her children asked why the family had done nothing about racism.
"This is my attempt to help elevate the voices of people of color, people who don't look like me and who don't benefit from the status quo," Batson, 42, said on Saturday, as her 9- and 11-year-old children hid shyly behind her.
In recent days, white Americans have donned "Black Lives Matter" shirts, carried homemade signs, and shouted "Hands up, Don't shoot" in cities and small towns across the United States. Sometimes they lay down in the streets, just as Floyd, an unarmed black man in handcuffs, lay face down and struggling to breathe as a white police officer knelt on his neck.