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Meghan Markle and her husband Prince Harry watched the memorial service for George Floyd Thursday, and have been speaking privately with community leaders, activists, and advocates, a friend of the couple has told The Daily Beast.
The friend added that in speaking Wednesday to a class of young women graduating from her alma mater, the Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles, she was seeking to impress upon them that it will fall to them as “the next generation of leaders” to “make change a reality.”
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The friend added that Meghan and Harry have spent the past several days “engaging and listening and learning” and “supporting the movement for justice and equity.”
The friend said that Meghan stood by her remarks to a class of graduates at her old school, whom she told Wednesday, “When the foundation is broken, so are we.”
Meghan made it clear that she has been deeply affected by the killing of Floyd, and the many protests that have followed his death.
Indeed, listening to Meghan speak out, in uncompromising and impassioned terms about Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, it was well to consider just how difficult it would have been for her to vocalize her anguish about the issue if she and Harry had remained part of the Royal Family.
The need, as a member of the royal family, to self-censor and refrain from voicing an opinion on controversial issues, is believed to have been one of the contributing factors that pushed her and Harry to exiting the institution.
Indeed, in this regard, it was instructive to compare Meghan’s heartfelt response with that of William and Kate, who have so far limited themselves to a single, carefully worded social media post on the issue of racial solidarity which read, “Heads Together stands with the black community. Today and every day.”
In one of the most strikingly personal parts of Meghan’s speech, which sources told The Daily Beast, she recorded on her cellphone, to the graduating class of her old school, Meghan said, “What is happening in our country and in our state and in our hometown of LA has been absolutely devastating” and recalled the LA of 1992, when "I was 11 or 12 years old and it was the LA Riots, which was also triggered by senseless act of racism,” she said. “I remember the curfew and I remember rushing back home and on that drive home, seeing ash fall from the sky and smelling the smoke and seeing the smoke billow out of buildings… I remember seeing men in the back of a van just holding guns and rifles. I remember pulling up to the house and seeing the tree, that had always been there, completely charred. And those memories don’t go away.”
Markle apologized to the young people that the world had not moved on sufficiently for such scenes to be a “history lesson.”
A source told The Daily Beast that Meghan had been “excited to be part of the IHHS Graduation Ceremony, but after this week, knew there was no way she could speak to a group of compassionate, service-driven young women without addressing George Floyd and the racism that plagues this country.”
The source added that Meghan’s “heart hurts for the young people that are graduating into a world of uncertainty and injustice. She hopes that her words provided a small bit of hope, comfort, or inspiration to the school community she cares about so deeply.”
While Meghan and Harry have both cautiously avoided explicitly claiming that she was the victim of racism while she lived in the United Kingdom, it has been widely speculated that a forthcoming book about the couple by journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, written with the cooperation of the couple’s friends, will contain allegations of racism.
The minor royal, Princess Michael of Kent, wore a racist Victorian brooch to the Queen’s 2017 Christmas lunch, the first time she met Meghan.
Meghan and Harry’s friend, the journalist Tom Bradby, was widely thought to be referencing allegations of racism at the palace when he wrote in The Sunday Times, “I have some idea of what might be aired in a full, no-holds-barred, sit-down interview and I don’t think it would be pretty.”
Interestingly, Bradby appeared to specifically exonerate Prince Philip, who has made multiple public, racist comments over the years, saying that Harry and Meghan “find some other members of the family (with the exception of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh) jealous and, at times, unfriendly.”
