Participants at a Wilkes University vigil Tuesday in memory of Tyre Nichols joined in three minutes of silence, one minute for each day in the hospital before dying after a police beating in Memphis.
                                 Mark Guydish | Times Leader

Participants at a Wilkes University vigil Tuesday in memory of Tyre Nichols joined in three minutes of silence, one minute for each day in the hospital before dying after a police beating in Memphis.

Mark Guydish | Times Leader

Wilkes University students and faculty gather to mourn Tyre Nichols

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<p>Alicia Govens sings ‘Amazing Grace’ at the end of a vigil held in memory of Memphis Police beating victim Tyre Nichols at Wilkes University Tuesday. The school’s assistant director of residence life, Govens noted the hymn’s author was involved in the slave trade before enduring a shipwreck, then became an Anglican minister and abolitionist. By the end of the song, she was choking back tears.</p>
                                 <p>Mark Guydish | Times Leader</p>

Alicia Govens sings ‘Amazing Grace’ at the end of a vigil held in memory of Memphis Police beating victim Tyre Nichols at Wilkes University Tuesday. The school’s assistant director of residence life, Govens noted the hymn’s author was involved in the slave trade before enduring a shipwreck, then became an Anglican minister and abolitionist. By the end of the song, she was choking back tears.

Mark Guydish | Times Leader

<p>Wilkes University Multi-cultural Student Coalition President Katherine Ermeus gave opening remarks during a vigil in memory of Memphis police beating victim Tyre Nichols Tuesday. ‘Together we can evoke the change we need,’ she said.</p>
                                 <p>Mark Guydish | Times Leader</p>

Wilkes University Multi-cultural Student Coalition President Katherine Ermeus gave opening remarks during a vigil in memory of Memphis police beating victim Tyre Nichols Tuesday. ‘Together we can evoke the change we need,’ she said.

Mark Guydish | Times Leader

WILKES-BARRE — In the end, even the hope-filled lyrics of “Amazing Grace” fell short as Wilkes University students and faculty gathered around the flagpoles for a vigil in memory of Tyre Nichols. Alicia Govens sang the widely used hymn of redemption to close the vigil, but choked up with tears on the last verse.

The song was fitting, the school’s assistant director of residence life said, because the author provides a striking example of how great change can come to anyone — the kind of change several speakers said the country needs in the wake of the brutal police beating that led to Nichols’ death in Memphis.

John Newton worked in the slave trade in the 1700s before surviving a shipwreck and becoming the Anglican minister who penned one of the best known Christian hymns, Govens reminded the crowd.

The Wilkes Multicultural Student Coalition arranged the vigil in the Fenner Quadrangle, handing out battery-powered candles to participants. Coalition President Kathrine Ermeus offered opening remarks, recounting how Nichols, 29 and a father, was going home when police conducted a traffic stop that led to a beating despite protestations that he was cooperating.

Nichols spent three days in a hospital before dying, a fact the crowd commemorated with three minutes of silence.

“The incident sends shivers down my spine,” Ermeus said. “He was fighting for his life as they screamed ‘lay flat on the ground!’” She cited reports of delays in emergency treatment and transportation that could have made a difference, and said that even though six officers were almost immediately fired, this was another in a growing list cases where excessive police force leading to needless death.

“Together we can evoke the change we need.”

Faculty representative Helen Davis said “the use of excessive force continues to happen routinely,” and that one study suggested more than half the cases of police violence go unreported. Each time a case makes national news, there are renewed calls for changes in police training and protocols, and in the system as a whole. She pointed out Nichols sobbed as he said he was lying flat, as he “called for his mom over and over again, asking them to stop. But they didn’t stop.”

“He said he just wanted to go home,” Davis continued, her voice cracking a bit as she held back tears.

“What home have we made for him? What home will we make for his son?”

Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish