On May 25, 2020, the world was indelibly changed by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd’s death set off a series of protests in the United States and around the world, awakening millions to the dire need for reimagining this country’s broken system of policing.
But behind a face that would be graffitied onto countless murals, and a name that has become synonymous with civil rights, there is the reality of one man’s stolen life: a life beset by suffocating systemic pressures that ultimately proved inescapable.
Placing George Floyd’s narrative within the larger context of America’s enduring legacy of institutional racism, the new book: His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, is a landmark biography by prizewinning Washington Post reporters, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. Olorunnipa joins us.