Marches for Racial Justice and Black Women Converge in Washington

On the first crisp fall day in Washington, thousands of anti-racism marchers proved that the capital’s summer of protests had not yet come to a close.

Two separate rallies — the March for Racial Justice and the March for Black Women — converged in Lincoln Park, a picnic-and-birthday-party plot nestled in the heart of the gentrified eastern part of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. They marched in front of the Justice Department before descending on the National Mall to denounce institutionalized racism.

“It’s now an Injustice Department,” said Markus Batchelor, a member of Washington’s State Board of Education representing Ward 8, a predominantly black part of the city where he was raised. “We’re here because there are concerted efforts to deprive minorities of their rights. Under this president, the Justice Department has become a mechanism to make injustice the law of the land — and that’s dangerous.”

The March for Racial Justice — which sought to “harness the national unrest and help focus it into a national mobilization,” according to its website — was organized after the acquittal of a Minnesota police officer in the death of Philando Castile. Mr. Castile’s killing, during a traffic stop, was live-streamed on Facebook by his girlfriend.

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