The Nine Minutes and Twenty-Nine Seconds
At 8:01 p.m. on May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police respond to a call about a man allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a Cup Foods store. The man is George Perry Floyd Jr., 46, a Black man who grew up in Houston's Third Ward and moved to Minneapolis after a period of incarceration. Officers attempt to put him in a police vehicle. He says he is claustrophobic. The situation escalates. Officer Derek Chauvin handcuffs Floyd, takes him to the ground, and kneels on his neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds while Floyd says "I can't breathe" at least 27 times and then stops speaking.
Three other officers — Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane — do not intervene. Darnella Frazier, 17, films the killing on her phone. Frazier later receives a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for her recording — the first Pulitzer ever awarded for smartphone video. The video is seen by hundreds of millions of people within days. Floyd is pronounced dead at a hospital at 9:25 p.m.
The Uprisings: 2,000 Cities, Every State, 60 Countries
Within 24 hours of Floyd's death, protests begin in Minneapolis. Within a week, protests have spread to every state in the country and 60 countries around the world. Researchers at the Crowd Counting Consortium estimate that between 15 million and 26 million people participate in protests in the United States during June 2020 — making it, by far, the largest protest movement in American history. The previous record, the 2017 Women's March, involved an estimated 4–5 million participants.
The protests include peaceful marches and vigils, occupation of public spaces, and — in Minneapolis and a handful of other cities — riots and property destruction including the burning of the Third Precinct police building in Minneapolis. Media coverage focuses heavily on the property destruction, which constitutes a small fraction of the total protest activity. Police respond to protests in hundreds of cities with rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and mass arrests — often against peaceful protesters, journalists, and legal observers.
"I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe."
— George Floyd, May 25, 2020The Verdict, the Legislation, and the Backlash
On April 20, 2021, Derek Chauvin is convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter — the first Minneapolis police officer ever convicted for an on-duty killing. He is sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. The verdict is historically unprecedented in the annals of police accountability in Minnesota.
Congress attempts police reform. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passes the House twice — in 2021 and again. It dies in the Senate both times, blocked by Republican filibusters and the refusal of Senator Tim Scott to broker a bipartisan deal. As of 2024, no comprehensive federal police reform legislation has been enacted in response to Floyd's death or the 2020 protests. Several cities and states have enacted reforms — banning chokeholds, restricting no-knock warrants, requiring body cameras. Police killings of Black Americans continue at roughly the same rate.
The political backlash to the 2020 movement is swift and sustained. The slogan "Defund the Police" — a shorthand for redirecting some police funding to social services, interpreted by many as abolition — is used by Republicans to frame all Democrats as anti-police radicals. Critical Race Theory bans spread through state legislatures. The brief 2020 window when a majority of white Americans told pollsters that racism was a serious problem closes. By 2022, polling shows the window has largely closed. The movement's victories are real. The structural change it sought is largely unrealized.