Controversies over police killings have been a persistent story in the U.S. for years, but no recent case has prompted a national movement at the scale of the response to George Floyd's death.
Throughout America’s long history of racial violence, certain names have stood out as markers of the struggles of a particular period in time. Emmett Till’s lynching in 1955 drew attention to the brutality of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The beating of Rodney King and acquittal of the officers involved sparked the Los Angeles riots in 1992. The police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014 brought the Black Lives Matter movement into the national consciousness.
Floyd’s death was part of a string of recent controversial killings. Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down by a white father and son while jogging through a suburban Georgia neighborhood. Breonna Taylor was shot eight times by police who busted through her apartment door late at night in Louisville, Ky. Tony McDade, a black transgender man, was shot and killed by police in Tallahassee, Fla.
Story continuesMajor events don’t occur in a vacuum and are often the culmination of an escalating trend. Floyd’s death may very well have been the tipping point of anger that had been building over the incidents involving Arbery, Taylor, Garner and so many others. This may be especially true for Minneapolis, which has had several controversial police shootings.
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