On May 25, 2020, police in Minneapolis, Minnesota were called to a local convenience store in response to a “forgery in progress.”

Earlier a 46-year-old, African American man named George Floyd had made a purchase using a 20-dollar bill that the clerk suspected as being a possible counterfeit (Bogel-Burroughs and Wright, 2021). The clerk reported the possible counterfeit to his manager, though he also stated on the record that he didn’t think Floyd knew the bill was a fake. The police were called, and when they arrived on the scene, they violently removed George Floyd by force from the vehicle in which he was sitting, handcuffed him, and pinned him down on the street (Fernandez and Burch, 2020). Despite there being video evidence that Floyd was not resisting or being uncooperative with the police officers or their directions, Office Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pinned him with a knee driven into George Floyd’s neck and upper back. He held his knee down on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, as Floyd’s diminishing screams “I can’t breathe” and cries for help continued. Even during the last two minutes–after Floyd was motionless and without a pulse while they waited for medical support–the knee remained firmly pressed down upon his neck. 

Bystanders captured the brutal episode on camera, and there was immediate public outrage at the hyper-militant, over-response by officers to the African American man.

Further, George Floyd’s death seemed even more uncalled for because the minor violation that began the incident was the accidental use of a counterfeit bill. During the summer of 2020, protests appeared across the United States in most major cities, with the names of local black Americans and local incidents being added to the chants for justice and change. The several video recordings of George Floyd’s death showed his desperate cries for relief lasted at least eight minutes and forty-six seconds, and many protests took this time and number as symbolic–often with the crowds holding a long silence for 8:46 in honor of Floyd and all those other African Americans killed at the hands of police. Additionally, Floyd’s words “I can’t breathe!” swept across the national protests and conversation as a real, concrete cry from a black American suffering, and also a larger metaphorical call to action by the African American community and allies for fundamental changes to systems of policing and criminal justice (Fernandez and Burch, 2020). 

Because it was filmed and disseminated via social media, and because it was so clear a violation of Floyd’s basic human rights, the incident spread globally.

Its publicity helped raise awareness concerning the experiences of Black citizens who live under the shadow of over-policing and systems that have long traditions of racism embedded just below the surface.

Floyd’s legacy is that of a global, perspective-reorienting event, leading to serious conversations seeking to reform the systems and the structures of funding social services, including the police. Additionally, the protests and growing awareness of the long-standing effects of historical slavery and the ongoing effects of systemic racism led the Black Lives Matter Movement from the sidelines into mainstream conversation.