More than 100 congregants of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Philadelphia marched in Sunday’s swelter to the church’s former burial ground to protest the arrest and subsequent death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail.
Bland, 28, of Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, was driving through Wallace County, Texas, to begin a new job as a student ambassador at Prairie View A&M University, from which she graduated in 2009. She was arrested and jailed, police say, after she assaulted an officer during a traffic stop.