Five years ago, the world changed because of the courage of a 17-year-old girl who recorded the murder of George Floyd.
I spent several weeks in George Floyd Square in Minneapolis while covering the trial of the former police officer who killed Floyd, and while directing the documentary Bearing Witness: A Portrait of Darnella Frazier. The film revealed the girl behind the video that inspired a worldwide movement for police accountability and racial justice.
Five years later, Frazier is 22, living a normal life while a heavy pendulum swings back against the progress inspired by her video. A new presidential administration is trying to rewrite and erase history – but I think America will remain changed by what Frazier recorded the evening of May 25, 2020, on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in North Minneapolis.
Many people would disagree with me about this change. But in my view, there is no going back – thanks to the forces unleashed by Frazier.
She was walking her 9-year-old cousin to the Cup Foods corner store when she saw Floyd, who had been accused of passing a counterfeit bill at the store, on the ground next to a police car. Officer Derek Chauvin was pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck, where it stayed for roughly nine minutes as Floyd begged for relief. Frazier kept filming the entire time, despite threats from officers on the scene.
Later that night, she posted her video to Facebook. This was during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, and eight years into the growing Black Lives Matter movement that began with the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Darnella’s video went viral, creating an avalanche of outrage that slammed into the pent-up frustrations of a quarantined nation – and sparked the biggest movement for racial justice in history.
Without the video, there would have been no marches by millions worldwide. No riots, no police reform, maybe no President Joe Biden. This is why she was awarded a 2021 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation.
One of the most chilling facts about Floyd’s death, in my opinion, is that the day after, the Minneapolis Police Department posted a mendacious statement attributing the murder to “medical distress.” Without Frazier’s video, George Floyd would have disappeared into the list of at least 1,100 people killed by police that year.
In March 2021, Chauvin went on trial, and millions feared another injustice. Police convictions were exceedingly rare, video or not. As the trial proceeded, I found it excruciating to hear the defense make up theories that they hoped would conjure up reasonable doubt, like Floyd, pinned near the police car’s tailpipe, died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Outside the courtroom, I listened to occupants of George Floyd Square, the autonomous four-square-block zone that local residents claimed around the site of Floyd’s death.
Frazier’s testimony at the trial was featured in Bearing Witness, which Andscape produced under its previous name, The Undefeated. Deeply traumatized by the killing she witnessed and the countless hateful messages she received because of her video, Frazier went into seclusion and declined to sit for an interview for our film. So we shared her story through what she said in court – due to her age, her face was not shown on the courtroom camera. We also used a tearful speech she made in public, her social media, and interviews with her high school principal, her history teacher, and a juror from the Chauvin trial.
“There’s been nights I stayed up apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more, for not physically interacting and saving his life,” Frazier testified. “But it’s not what I should have done, it’s what (Chauvin) should have done.”
Her testimony and video played a key role in Chauvin’s conviction for second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. When the verdict came down, I was standing in George Floyd Square, next to the huge Black fist rising from the middle of the intersection, and I could feel the wave of emotion pouring from the people.
The feeling spread.
Over the next few years, policing changed in complicated ways that are still being studied, but there was a new and undeniable atmosphere of scrutiny and accountability around police violence. Corporations pledged to eliminate systemic barriers to equal opportunity. Confederate flags and monuments came down. In sports, even the almighty NFL finally responded to the concerns of Black athletes. WNBA players changed the outcome of the Georgia election for U.S. Senate.
Yes, some institutions responded out of convenience, not conviction, pandering to the moment. The inevitable resentments grew amid the unprecedented “racial reckoning.” After the 2024 election, along came the big payback.
Under pressure from the current administration, American institutions purged diversity efforts. The NFL removed the “End Racism” message from the Super Bowl playing field. The mayor of Washington had to dig up the “Black Lives Matter” street outside the White House. Maya Angelou was banned from the West Point library; Hitler and Mein Kampf remain.
The list goes on. And yet …
Federal oversight of abusive police departments is ending. In Minneapolis, the mayor pledged that the police force would follow the federal consent decree anyway. The city refuses to go back to the time when kneeling on a man’s neck for almost nine minutes is described as “medical distress.”
Worldwide, the memories of 2020 will never disappear. The marches, the protests, the raised fists, the riots—they happened. Children experienced feelings that can never be unfelt. Elders who survived the original Civil Rights Movement were brought full circle. Everyone witnessed the power of action.
The pendulum swings and eventually stops. Most of those Confederate symbols didn’t go up right after the Civil War; they were a reaction to Black progress during the Civil Rights Movement. George Floyd took that iconography down – and it’s not coming back.
George Floyd Square is still there. The fist still rises, thanks to a 17-year-old Black girl who stared death in the face and pressed record.
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