Mourners gather Tuesday for the funeral of George Floyd, who will be laid to rest beside the mother he cried out for as he was brutally, slowly murdered by Minneapolis police. Floyd’s killing has sparked weeks of protest that have changed the United States of America, leading to a turning point in support for the Black Lives Matter movement and prompting a new push for serious police reform or even defunding police departments and shifting the funding to positive investments in communities.
Among the reforms sparked by Floyd’s death, the Minneapolis City Council will ban chokeholds and has pledged to dismantle the police department that killed Floyd and replace it with “community-led public safety.” New York is moving to ban chokeholds and repeal a law protecting abusive officers from having their records made public.
Floyd was born in 1973 and grew up in Houston, where “We didn’t have much, but we had a house full of love,” his brother Rodney said at his Minneapolis funeral. Floyd was a standout athlete in both football and basketball who became the first of his siblings to graduate high school and attend college; he didn’t finish, in part, a friend told the Houston Chronicle, because he was trying to support his mother financially and “It took a mental toll.” He was also active in Houston’s hip-hop scene.
Between 1997 and 2007, Floyd had a string of arrests and some convictions, one of which is part of a large number of cases being reinvestigated after a scandal involving the arresting officer. In 2017 he moved to Minnesota through a church connection with a substance abuse treatment center there. In Minneapolis he worked as a security guard at a Salvation Army facility and worked other jobs on the side until now-former officer Derek Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, grinding him into the pavement long past the time he became unresponsive.
Floyd left two adult children and a six-year-old daughter, along with his siblings and friends.