Not only did Beyoncé slay on the stage at the MTV VMAs and sweep enough wins at the Sunday night award show to pass Madonna as the show's most decorated artist — the Queen Bey also invited the mothers of four unarmed black men killed in instances of racially-charge violence to join her on the event's white carpet.
The mothers of Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner & Oscar Grant at the #VMAs tonight ❤️🍋 pic.twitter.com/U8qzcvM2pK
— BEYONCÉ LEGION (@Bey_Legion) August 28, 2016
Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner — a 43-year-old Staten Island man who died in July 2014 after police stopped him for selling untaxed cigarettes and placed him in a controversial chokehold — posed with Beyoncé and the mothers of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant in a photo before the music video awards ceremony began at Madison Square Garden.
Carr, Lesley McSpadden-Head, Sybrina Fulton and Wanda Johnson had all appeared in Beyoncé's visual album "Lemonade" holding photographs of their dead sons.
"Lemonade," released in April, won a VMA in the "breakthrough long-form video" category Sunday.
The death of Carr's son was captured on a cellphone video, which shows NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo putting Garner into a chokehold and dragging him to the ground. The asthmatic man's plea of "I can't breathe," as recorded in the video, became a rallying cry for activists in the Black Lives Matter movement denouncing police brutality.
