Friend,

He died in less than nine minutes, gasping for air before lying motionless on the concrete without a pulse.

People across the country, especially in the Black community, recoiled in horror as video evidence of the police brutality careened across the internet and TV screens. Thousands of protesters would soon surge into the streets, powering up a movement that had been brewing for years.   

The murder of George Floyd was nothing new; this one had simply been laid bare for the world to see. And the nation cried out for justice. 

Around 8 p.m. on May 25, 2020, the 46-year-old Black man was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes from Cup Foods in Minneapolis.

After the arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, shoved Floyd to the street and knelt on his neck. Pinned to the pavement, Floyd pleaded for his “mama.” He told Chauvin and three other officers, “I’m about to die. Please don’t kill me.” Chauvin, 45, simply told Floyd to “relax.”

“I can’t breathe,” Floyd replied. “Please, the knee in my neck, I can’t breathe.” He would repeat that he couldn’t breathe no fewer than 20 times before he eventually took his last breath, lost consciousness and died.  

It wasn’t the first time the phrase was uttered by a Black man during an encounter  with police. Printed on thousands of T-shirts and banners, it had already become a well-known rallying cry in the movement to fundamentally transform policing and end police violence against the Black community.    

In 2013, Eric Garner voiced 11 times that he, too, couldn’t breathe after he was wrestled to the ground and put in a chokehold by a New York City police officer on suspicion of illegally selling cigarettes.    

Garner’s death came a year after George Zimmerman, who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on Feb. 26, 2012, was acquitted after claiming self-defense against the unarmed Black teen.

Outraged, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi founded the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Few thought the movement had staying power.

But in 2020, tens of thousands of people would march in solidarity for Floyd and BLM in demonstrations that spanned the globe, making it one of the largest movements in history.

The movement inspired the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the U.S. House in early March and is being negotiated in the Senate. The legislation would ban chokeholds and end qualified immunity – the legal protection that limits victims’ ability to sue police officers for misconduct. The law would also ban no-knock warrants in federal drug cases while mandating data collection on police encounters.

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center