For three days, beginning Wednesday, church bells across Denver will toll at noon for eight minutes and 46 seconds in remembrance of significant moments in black history and the nation’s civil rights movement.
The length of the bell ringing represents the amount of time a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck, killing him and sparking outrage over police brutality across the United States.
“The church rings its bells to remember and grieve Mr. Floyd, to stand in solidarity with all who are working for an end to systemic racism, and to acknowledge that we have also grievously fallen short throughout our history as a church and a nation,” according to a news release from Messiah Community Church in Denver.
The bell ringing begins Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the massacre inside the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where a white supremacist shot and killed nine black church members during a Wednesday night service. And the bell ringing on Friday will celebrate Juneteenth, the annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.
