I never met him, but George Perry Floyd Jr. changed my life and the way I practice my faith. Like millions of people across the world, I said his name during the summer of 2020. But what echoed back to me was what it means to be human, and I’ve never heard it again so clearly.
I became more fully a believer in our shared humanity following the visceral footage of his brutal murder, recorded by Darnella Frazier, a teenager. It was May 25th and Memorial Day. It was the “come-to-Jesus meeting” I didn’t expect but couldn’t deny.
I was being called away from the church building and to embody community. Sitting down and standing up during a Sunday morning worship service was ineffective. This movement, which I had been content with for decades, suddenly no longer moved me.
Floyd had also changed my routine and my rituals. Daily, I left my home to walk the streets of Washington, D.C. I began to “pray with my feet,” as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel defined protest, instead of my hands.
My hymns weren’t in a book but in the air. Up ahead, someone had taken the lead to start our call and response as we walked. Without rehearsals or a choir robe, everyone found their place and their note.
We were all in this together. Without a church announcement or a printed program, we had heard the call for solidarity and oneness.
Most importantly, we identified with George Perry Floyd Jr.’s body. He had been pinned to the ground for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. We couldn’t unsee it.
Under the weight of white-body supremacy, evidenced by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck, Floyd struggled to breathe. With his dying breaths, he told his friends and family that he loved them: “Mama, I love you!” “Reese, I love you!” “Tell my children I love them.” I saw law versus love that day.
And for a while, Americans were with him. We all agreed that 9 minutes and 29 seconds was far too long to keep a man down, resulting in Floyd gasping for air before he finally succumbed. Floyd had only been suspected of purchasing a pack of menthol cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.
Why not simply arrest him then? We knew the answer to that question and we knew it was wrong. It was time for a “racial reckoning.”
Lawmakers, congresspersons, corporations, and police departments rushed to associate themselves with his name. In 2020, fighting for “racial justice” was a good look and good for business.
“His name would become a rallying cry for a movement that declared that lives like his matter,” Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa wrote in “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” “White suburban moms would march in the street alongside poor Black boys to demand that their country treat them equally. Together they shouted, ‘Say his name!’ and then they would jointly respond to the prompt with anger, frustration and resolve.”
Less than five years later, the “Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville that called for an overhaul of their police departments following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that became the catalyst for nationwide racial injustice protests in the summer of 2020,” the Associated Press reports. While this potential development is disheartening, it’s not surprising. America has always been unfair and unjust towards African Americans.
Still, I have no intention of walking back my commitment to Brother Floyd. His life mattered. He was somebody!
So, today, I encourage you to remember that Floyd was somebody, too. For 46 years, he was somebody’s baby: Larcenia and George Floyd Sr.’s son, somebody’s brother: Rodney, Philonise, Bridgett and LaTonya’s sibling, somebody’s father: Quincy Mason Floyd, Connie Mason and Gianna Floyd’s dad.
He could have also been our son, our brother, our father. So, say his name with me: George Perry Floyd Jr.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
