Editor’s Note: This story contains sensitive imagery. We included a photograph of the lynching of Rubin Stacy as a historical reference to the horrific incidents described in this article. Lynching imagery was used to perpetuate white supremacist ideology by creating a record of brutality against black men and women. It was important to show that as part of this story.
A video shows George Floyd, a black man, lying in the street in anguish, with his head crushed against the pavement. A white officer presses his knee into Floyd’s neck. “I can’t breathe,” Floyd, 46, says repeatedly. “Please. Please. Please. I can’t breathe. Please, man.” Bystanders, filming the scene, plead with the officer to stop. He doesn’t. As three other officers stand by, he kneels on Floyd for eight minutes and 48 seconds as the life seeps from his body.
“It was a modern-day lynching,” said Arica Coleman, an historian, cultural critic, and author.
“This man was lying helplessly on the ground. He’s subdued. There’s the cop kneeling on his neck. This man is pleading for his life. To me, that is
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