I vividly remember the first time I saw the video of the death of George Floyd. I was eating lunch and watching CNN. Before the news segment ended, I had already dialed my friend, the late Mansfield Frazier, telling him to turn on his TV. “You got to see this one,” I yelled into the phone. “The police just killed another Black guy!”
Since that fateful day — May 25, 2020 — when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on to the neck of George Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds until he was dead, the story has been repeated again and again. It was rehashed with the death of Ahmaud Arbery, killed by vigilante neighbors, and Breonna Taylor, and Daunte Wright — killed at the hands of police.
It has been repeated so many times that we all know the basic story. Floyd was accused by a storeowner of passing a fake $20 bill that led to his encounter with the police. We all followed the trial of Chauvin as he was tried and found guilty of murder. But there is much more to the story — a story that has deep roots in the racism and bigotry that has sadly been an integral part of American society.
Compiling Floyd’s life story, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa transform George Perry Floyd Jr. from an image on a poster to a human being with wants and needs and goals — a man whom we would all probably like if we ran across him in our daily life. (His Name is George Floyd: Viking Press, 2022)
Subtitled One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, the authors show Floyd’s good sides and his many of flaws as they chronicle his journey from his birth in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973, to his coming of age in Houston, Texas, to the street corner in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They detail the events that led up to the encounter between Floyd and Chauvin, the investigation, the trial, and the aftermath. They spend no time talking about riots that ensued in the aftermath.
Through an impressive use of historical records, they trace the histories of the ancestors of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin. The whites people who came to America looking for a better life. The Blacks were brought to this country and sought a better life after Emancipation. Floyd’s great-great-grandfather — an illiterate former slave — prospered as a successful North Carolina tobacco farmer until he was swindled out of his land in the early 1900s. As a result, his descendants eked out a living as sharecroppers going deeper and deeper into debt year after year. Even in the 1970s, Floyd visited his grandmother who lived in a house in North Carolina with no indoor plumbing. How different history might have been for Floyd’s family had his ancestors retained their land.
Chauvin’s ancestors were able to take advantage of business and educational opportunities and successfully achieve the American dream. It allowed Derek to be in a position of power as a police officer over Floyd, an unemployed, drug-addicted, formerly incarcerated person.
No one is trying to say that George Floyd was a saint. But as the authors so vividly demonstrate, Black Americans often have the cards stacked against them, and Floyd had more than his share. The vestiges of slavery that affected his life came in the form of underfunded schools that left students like Floyd unprepared to pass state-mandated proficiency tests that are the ticket to the next step in education. He grew up in poverty, living in substandard housing in neighborhoods where unemployment and underemployment were rampant. He was a victim of a justice system, starting with the police on the street, that is hardly reflective of the blindfolded statue of justice that we want to believe is representative of our judicial system.
The importance of re-entry, drug rehabilitation programs, job training programs and affordable housing for both formerly incarcerated persons and inner-city and low-income residents are made obvious as the reader sees Floyd struggled to regain a place in society after his time of incarceration. The realities of the drug culture that are so pervasive in both Black and White communities jump off the pages, as Floyd’s life spirals downward — even after he made a valiant effort to turn his life around by moving to Minneapolis where he believed that services and opportunities, unavailable in Texas, could alter his path.
The irony of the book is that those who need to read it won’t. For readers like me, it was preaching to the choir. But even with my knowledge of the history of the African-American experience, there were fact and figures, statistics and numbers that were shocking even to me. It became a page turner as I identified with Floyd’s struggled and inwardly hoped that there would have been another end to the story. I wanted him to succeed in his attempts at a new life. I didn’t want him to fall back into the drug culture. I wanted him to keep his job and stay sober.
There are so many what ifs in the George Floyd story. What if the teenager had not pull out her phone and recorded the events? What if another officer had responded to the scene? What if the store clerk had not noticed the $20 bill? What if …
There are at least two sides to every story. Samuels and Olorunnipa tell George Floyd’s side of a complicated story of life in America in the 21st century. It is a story that needs to be told and understood by Americans of every race, color and creed. This book makes a valuable contribution to the literature of race and race relations in America.
One Response to “BOOK REVIEW: His Name Is George Floyd,” Reviewed by C. Ellen Connally”
Mel Maurer
Sounds like a very comprehensive book. Now to get people to read it. Thanks