The continuing protests in Charlotte over the police shooting on an African-American man will only be successful if "we … get out of riot mode," Dr. Alveda King said Saturday.
"Protest is OK," King, the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., told Uma Pemmaraju on Fox News. "But protests, according to my King family legacy, should be peaceful.
"The shooting, the looting, the violence, destroying must stop.
"We grieve for everyone who has lost a family member, everyone," King added.
"America, we need to pray and lead from our spirits and not our emotions — and definitely not with our weapons."
Demonstrations were held Saturday — and a midnight curfew and the National Guard remained in place — in the wake of Tuesday's fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, 43, in the parking lot of an apartment complex.
Violence broke out the first two nights, leading to injuries of police and civilians, several arrests and property damage.
Justin Carr, 26, died Thursday from a gunshot wound to the head during the second night of unrest. A 21-year-old Charlotte man was charged Friday in connection with his death.
Protests have since been largely peaceful.
Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency, and attorneys for Scott's family released cellphone footage Friday by his wife, Rakeyia Scott, that raised more questions about whether her husband had a gun during the incident.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney has said that a gun was recovered at the scene, though police video did not definitely show Scott "actually holding and pointing a gun at an officer."
Putney has not released videos of the shooting.
King, who is also a Newsmax contributor, told Fox that "the violent rioting that is sometimes now being called protesting — it makes the emotions so high that you almost cannot see the insults and injuries that are the people are suffering.
"In Charlotte, you have wonderful people there from every ethnic group, from every socioeconomic position, but they also are terrorized when people begin to loot and kill and shoot.
"When you're emotionally violent, you're not going to be able to really clearly identify the problems and attack the problems," she added. "Racism does exist in America. Certainly it is there in Charlotte.
"It's not the only problem. Poverty, lack of communication. We have to be able to pray — and we must be able to hear."
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