His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner): One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice - Hardcover

Samuels, Robert; Olorunnipa, Toluse

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593490614 ISBN 13: 9780593490617

Verlag: Viking, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE IN NONFICTION
WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE; FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS PRIZE; A BCALA 2023 HONOR NONFICTION AWARD WINNER.

A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy—from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing—telling the story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.

“It is a testament to the power of His Name Is George Floyd that the book’s most vital moments come not after Floyd’s death, but in its intimate, unvarnished and scrupulous account of his life . . . Impressive.”
—New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

“Since we know George Floyd’s death with tragic clarity, we must know Floyd’s America—and life—with tragic clarity. Essential for our times.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist
 
“A much-needed portrait of the life, times, and martyrdom of George Floyd, a chronicle of the racial awakening sparked by his brutal and untimely death, and an essential work of history I hope everyone will read.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.
 
His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston's housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country's enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd's family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction—putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd's closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd’s America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert Samuels is a staff writer at The New Yorker who focuses on stories about politics, policy, and the changing American identity. He co-authored His Name Is George Floyd while he was a national enterprise reporter for The Washington Post, where he worked for nearly twelve years. His first full-time journalism job was at The Miami Herald.

Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He joined the Post in 2019 and has covered three presidencies. He previously worked at Bloomberg, where he reported on politics and policy from Washington and Florida.

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Chapter 1

 

An Ordinary Day

 

"It's Memorial Day. Y'all wanna grill?"

 

George Perry Floyd Jr. wasn't particularly skilled at flipping burgers, but he was glad when his friend Sylvia Jackson suggested the diversion. The coronavirus pandemic had left him jobless and listless, a shadow of the gregarious man his friends and family once knew. He had been trying to avoid spending more time in the darkness, feeding the addiction he could not seem to escape.

 

Jackson's modest home in North Minneapolis served as a family-friendly refuge. In May 2020, Floyd would spend most days on her couch, watching iCarly and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with her three girls. Other times, he'd help her craft TikTok videos in hopes that one day they might go viral.

 

"Let's do this one," she'd say, before dancing in her kitchen to the music of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy." Floyd would stare at the camera with mock-seriousness.

 

They were often joined by two friends who had worked with them at the Salvation Army, a quarantine quartet meant to keep one another company as they waited for the world to go back to normal. Jackson, thirty-two, rolled her eyes as Floyd would go on about chopped-and-screwed music, the hip-hop genre that emerged from his Houston hometown. In the evening, Floyd would talk throughout whatever movie they were watching, then shower her with questions about the plot afterward. Her daughters loved camping, so they sometimes set up tents and slept under the stars. Other nights, they'd throw some hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and play music, which was the plan on May 25, 2020, the day George Floyd would die.

 

That day, Jackson had to work an eight-to-two shift as a security guard, so she tasked Floyd with picking up some lighter fluid and charcoal. She handed him the keys to her car, a 2001 navy-blue Mercedes-Benz SUV, and $60 to pay for supplies.

 

"I'll be back home around three," Jackson told him.

 

Jackson trusted Floyd; she had loaned him the car several times before. Floyd had no other plans, so he called his friend Maurice Hall around ten a.m. to see if he wanted to hang out. Many of Floyd's friends warned him about Hall, forty-two, who had been sleeping between hotels and his vehicle, dealing drugs while trying to avoid arrest warrants. Floyd had tried for years to move on from using, but Hall provided some kinship during this empty part of his life. The two men would smoke weed or ingest pills, which Floyd would chase down with Tylenol to dilute the impact.

 

This was not the life either had envisioned when they left Houston's Third Ward for Minneapolis, seeking sobriety and opportunity. Hall told Floyd that he felt he had exhausted his options. Outstanding warrants had driven him underground, and he didn't want to turn himself in to police-he was a father now, with freckled, curly-haired children, and he couldn't stomach the idea of being locked up far away from them. Floyd could empathize with Hall's predicament: he felt guilty being so far away from his young daughter, Gianna.

 

On the other end of the line, Hall told Floyd he had a day's worth of errands and suggested they complete his to-do list together. Hall was eager to jump into the Benz-he had been borrowing a friend's old truck ever since a woman he had hooked up with in his hotel room had driven off with his ride, taking his clothes, shoes, and video games with her.

 

Hall suggested that Floyd meet him at a LensCrafters at the Rosedale Commons shopping center off Interstate 35 in nearby Roseville. Floyd could then follow him back to his hotel to exchange vehicles.

 

"What do you mean I can't come in?" Floyd said to the sales representative when he arrived, turned away by the store's COVID-19 protocol.

 

Hall bought a pair of clear-framed glasses and then stepped outside, where he saw Floyd dressed in a dirty tank top and blue sweatpants.

 

"What up, gator?" Hall said, and the two shook hands.

 

It was close to noon by this point, so they stopped at a Wendy's across the street. Hall ordered a burger with onion rings; Floyd got a Dave's Double. After they carried the food to the Benz and unwrapped the sandwiches, Floyd took out his phone to show Hall a new trend in the world of Southern hip-hop.

 

"You know about sassa walking?" Floyd asked.

 

The men ate their burgers and watched music videos of the emerging sound-it contained the heavy, gritty beats of chopped-and-screwed songs, but rappers laced lighter, faster rhymes over the tracks. Some of the videos demonstrated the dance itself, which combined salsa steps with pelvic thrusts.

 

"It's gonna be big," Floyd said.

 

Next, they went to drop off Hall's borrowed truck and chilled in his hotel room at the Embassy Suites in Brooklyn Center, just on the other side of the Mississippi River. They ate Cheetos as Hall waited for some buyers to pick up drugs.

 

After someone came to pick up pills, Hall wanted to show off how successful he had become. He pulled out $2,000 in cash, telling Floyd he had made that much money in a single night. The display was more than a simple flex; Hall thought he might have a solution to Floyd's lingering malaise and hoped Floyd could use his connections in Houston to help boost his drug business. He said he believed he was offering Floyd a great opportunity. Floyd wasn't working; Hall had a bustling clientele, ready to pay.

 

But Floyd didn't give the idea too much thought, Hall recalled. He didn't want the drug game to be a part of his life ever again. He knew he was a bad hustler. And his last stint in prison had been so traumatizing that he was terrified of what might happen if he got caught up in it anew.

 

Hall also had to deliver drugs to buyers in different parts of the city, which was another reason he was happy to have Big Floyd around. Hall had become increasingly paranoid about driving himself to drug deals and thought Floyd could take the wheel. They made their way to another hotel twenty miles south, in Bloomington, where they ate sandwiches and drank Minute Maid Tropical Punch. Hall remembered Floyd smoking weed, snorting powdered fentanyl, and taking Tylenol.

 

As Hall fielded calls from potential buyers, Floyd was busy having conversations of his own. One of the people Floyd was communicating with that day was Shawanda Hill, his former lover.

 

"I want to see you," she texted him.

 

Back on the north side, Jackson returned to her house to find no charcoal, no lighter fluid, no car, no Floyd. Concerned by her friend's absence, she called to check in.

 

"Where are you?" Jackson asked.

 

"I'm about to see my girl," Floyd said. "I'll be back tonight."

 

Evening was beginning to fall, and Hall still wanted to drop off clothes at the dry cleaners, get a new cell phone, and shop for a tablet. He thought he could pick one up at a corner store on Minneapolis's south side called CUP Foods, which was known as a spot for buying and selling electronics for cheap. Floyd was a familiar face at CUP-managers said he'd stop by once or twice a week.

 

He told his old lover that he was on his way to the store. Hill, forty-five, was thrilled at that news-she needed to buy a new battery for her cell phone anyway, and she hoped to sneak a little Floyd time before picking up her granddaughter, whom she had promised to babysit that day. Hill boarded the #5 bus and headed down to the corner of East Thirty-Eighth Street and Chicago Avenue.

 

 

Hall and Floyd got to CUP Foods first. Hall...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Viking
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593490614
• ISBN 13: 9780593490617
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 432
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: VIKING; https://www.penguin.com/overview-vikingbooks/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; USA
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