Protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd were kicking off again Sunday, as President Trump said he ordered the National Guard to start to withdraw from Washington, D.C., after some of the largest crowds yet gathered peacefully there to demand justice-system overhauls.
In New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ended the city’s curfew, which was originally supposed to go through Monday at 5 a.m., crediting peaceful protests. The city has gone five days with no significant property damage and arrested only four people during protests Saturday, according to the mayor’s office.
“Yesterday and last night we saw the very best of our city,” he tweeted.
Washington authorities said protests Saturday near the White House and at places such as the Lincoln Memorial drew more people than on previous days. Many protesters streamed to the newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza, where the city has painted the phrase in giant yellow letters on the street.
“Welcome to Black Lives Matter Plaza,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said Saturday, standing before a packed crowd at an intersection in front of the White House. The intersection was officially renamed on Friday. “It’s so wonderful to see everybody peacefully protesting, wearing your mask,” she said.
“I have just given an order for our National Guard to start the process of withdrawing from Washington, D.C., now that everything is under perfect control,” Mr. Trump said in a tweet on Sunday. “They will be going home, but can quickly return, if needed. Far fewer protesters showed up last night than anticipated!”
Photos: Black Lives Matter Protests Sweeping the Nation This Weekend
Saturday was Washington’s ninth day of protest and the 12th day in other major cities. Protests took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Boston and Raeford, N.C., the small town where Mr. Floyd was born. Mr. Floyd’s body stopped in Raeford for a public viewing and private service before traveling to Houston, where he lived before moving to Minneapolis.
On Monday, the Floyd family will hold a viewing that will be open to the public, but with limited capacity. A private funeral will follow Tuesday.
Police in Portland, Ore., and Seattle dispersed crowds of protesters late Saturday night. Portland police declared a civil disturbance, while Seattle police said individuals threw bottles, rocks and incendiary devices, and several officers were injured.
In Richmond, Va., demonstrators toppled a statue of Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham late Saturday night after a day of mostly peaceful demonstrations, according to the police department. The department said the statue was removed from the park for safety reasons and that no protesters were arrested Saturday or early Sunday.
At times the Washington protests generated a lively atmosphere. Music was blaring, 16th Street was dotted with food trucks and volunteers distributed snacks and bottled water. One group posed with National Guard personnel for a picture while others chanted, “No justice, no peace.”
A protester on Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington.
Photo: Dee Dwyer for The Wall Street JournalApril Cole of Washington, D.C., carried a sign that read, “I am a mother, please don’t kill my kids.” Ms. Cole called for electing leaders who support policies that help black people. “I don’t believe in reform,” she said. “I believe in wiping it all out and starting over.”
Mr. Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed May 25 after police officers arrested him for allegedly trying to pass off a counterfeit $20 bill. Video that circulated widely on social media showed a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck as Mr. Floyd pleaded for mercy and said he couldn’t breathe.
Tess Wiltshire, in New York, said she became emotional talking to her father at the dinner table about the issues raised by Mr. Floyd’s killing and decided she had to respond, organizing a march from the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Saturday toward the World Trade Center site.
“I realized I couldn’t let it go and just let the world go to pieces,” said Ms. Wiltshire, 17, standing next to her father, mother and sister.
People protest the death of George Floyd and police brutality at Washington Square Park, New York City.
Photo: Gabriela Bhaskar for The Wall Street JournalProtests continued into Saturday evening in some cities. In New York, protesters marched through Flatbush in Brooklyn from the Barclays Center, waving homemade posters and chanting “this is our revolution” and “our streets” as drivers in passing cars honked horns.
Jamel Gaines, a dance choreographer from Garrison, N.Y., said he took an Uber into the city specifically to attend the Brooklyn protest. Mr. Gaines said the most striking aspect was the diversity of protesters. “It really hit people who are non-color,” he said. “People realized, these are our friends and neighbors and people I work with” who are being killed.
Nashiea Allen, a 21-year-old veterinarian medicine student, said she came from the Catskills to protest on two consecutive nights. She said she was aware that she was putting herself at risk by breaking the 8 p.m. curfew. “If I’m going to be out past curfew, if I’m going to get arrested it’s because I want to make a change,” she said.
Ty Hobson-Powell, an organizer in Washington, D.C., said the tenor of the protests has changed over the past nine days of protests.
“The first couple of days, I was coming out here with milk in my backpack and with towels because we were getting tear gassed,” Mr. Hobson-Powell said. “Now, I’m coming out here with water, just to survive the day and stay hydrated.”
During the day Saturday—when temperatures surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit in some places—restaurants, night clubs, office buildings and others opened their doors to protesters, offering their bathrooms, water and snacks.
It has been difficult to estimate the size of the crowd in Washington, local officials said. There is no single organizing group and word of the protests spread across various social-media platforms. Unlike past major demonstrations in the nation’s capital, there isn’t a formal stage for speeches.
The city’s police chief, Peter Newsham, cited coronavirus as another complication. Normally authorities can track how many buses are coming into the city, but charters aren’t operating due to the pandemic. In recent days, the number of people at the protests have been estimated to be as large as 5,000, spread among different parts of the city.
As of Saturday about 4,700 National Guard members from 11 states are supporting or will support the “DC civil unrest mission,” according to information provided by the Guard. That is in addition to 1,000 District of Columbia Guard members who are on duty. Members of the National Guard on duty inside the District are unarmed, officials said.
In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey addressed hundreds of protesters who had stopped outside his home to rally in support of the idea of defunding the police department.
“I’ve been coming to grips with my own brokenness in this situation, my own failures, my own shortcomings and I know there needs to be deep-seated structural reforms in terms of how the department operates,” he said, according to a video circulated on Twitter.
A protest leader asked him whether he would commit to defunding the police department, pressing him to answer “yes” or “no.” He said he didn’t support abolishing the police.
The leader then told him to leave, using an expletive, and the mayor walked through the crowd as many booed and chanted “Go home, Jacob, go home,” and “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
“Mayor Frey is unwavering in his commitment to working with [Police Chief Medaria] Arradondo toward deep structural reforms and uprooting systemic racism. He does not support abolishing the police department,” a spokesman for the mayor said.
Photos and Voices of the George Floyd Protests: ‘We Deserve to Be Heard’
As protests and vigils spread across the country, protesters voice their motivations for getting involved.
As protests and vigils spread across the country, protesters voice their motivations for getting involved.
VIEW Photos
Protesters also gathered in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Johanna Moran, who held a sign that read “Latinas for Black Lives Matter,” said she spent the last several days educating herself on issues of race and American history.
She acknowledged racism in her own family toward black people. “It starts with black lives because they have been getting oppressed for hundreds of years,” she said. “And as my parents, they feel threatened by black people, which I am trying to eliminate at all costs because there’s not multiple races, there’s one and it’s the human race.”
Some cities have announced changes in response to the continuing protests. In Minneapolis, the city council said Friday it would ban police chokeholds and require officers to immediately report and intervene in any such unauthorized use of force. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for state police to stop using strangleholds.
In a news conference Sunday, Mr. de Blasio vowed a “next wave of reform” in New York City, including shifting funding from the police department to youth and social services and supporting increased transparency in police discipline.
A U.S. district judge in Denver signed a restraining order barring the city’s police from using chemical weapons or projectiles against protesters acting peacefully. Less-lethal projectiles, such as rubber bullets or bean bag rounds, can’t be fired indiscriminately into crowds, and irritants such as pepper spray and tear gas may be deployed only after crowds are given orders and time to disperse.
“I do not seek to prevent officers from protecting themselves or their community,” Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote. “However, the time is past to rely solely on the good faith and discretion of the Denver Police Department…. The Denver Police Department has failed in its duty to police its own.”
In Buffalo, N.Y., two police officers were charged on Saturday with felony assault in connection with a Thursday night altercation that injured a 75-year-old protester. The officers pleaded not guilty, according to Tom Burton, a lawyer for the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, which represents the officers.
—Alex Leary, Dave Michaels, Joe Flint, Ted Mann, Anne Steele, Jim Carlton, Andrés Rafael Martínez, Josh Barbanel, Joe Barrett and Ian Talley contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Restuccia at Andrew.Restuccia@wsj.com, Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com and Elizabeth Findell at Elizabeth.Findell@wsj.com
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