A BLACK Lives Matter protest organised by students at a Hereford college was held in a Welsh town this week.

Hundreds of people crowded around the bandstand in Abergavenny's Bailey Park to listen as activists young and old took to the stage to demand a better future for everyone. One free of racial prejudice.

The event on Monday (June 8) was part of a world-wide surge of action following the death of George Floyd - who died after a police officer knelt on his neck - in Minneapolis last month.

Organisers Amber Stratton, Mille Taylor and Isobel Holland, all aged 18 and students at Hereford Sixth Form, said they hoped the town’s residents would turn up to support the call for everyone, regardless of race, to play their part in stamping out racism and bigotry.

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One speaker at the event was Zachariah Gordon-Evans from Newport.

He spoke of how he had experienced racial prejudice from a young age, having racial slurs shouted at him from as far back as he could remember.

“Imagine that was your child,” he said.

“Would you want that for them?

“What are we still doing here in 2020?”

Mr Gordon-Evans said that he was no longer asking for acceptance, he was demanding it.

He also referenced a growing campaign to make more Britons aware of an all-too-often overlooked part of the country’s history.

“The UK and USA, these so-called ‘great countries’,” he said.

“Where do you think they got their wealth from?”

Another of the speakers was Lexia Richardson, aged 16.

She began by saying: “I want to make it clear that Black Live Matter does not pit black against white.

“It is everybody versus racism.”

Miss Richardson spoke of how black people helped to build Britain into the county it is today.

“They fought in the world wars,” she said.

And she added that black people are still fighting many in a silent war.

To close the protest, a list of names of black people who had been killed at the hands of the police in America was read out. It took more than ten minutes to complete.

This was followed by an eight-minute silence, which is the length of time that officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck.