His life began as the last embers of the civil rights movement were flickering out. Its horrific, videotaped end ignited the largest anti-racism movement since, with demonstrators the world over marching for racial justice in his name.
During the 46 years in between, George Perry Floyd came of age as the strictures of Jim Crow discrimination in America gave way to an insidious form of systemic racism, one that continually undercut his ambitions.
Early in life, he wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. Then, a pro athlete. At the end, he just longed for a little stability, training to be a commercial truck driver.
All were bigger dreams than he was able to achieve in his version of America. While his death was the catalyst for global protests against racial inequality, the eight-minutes and 46 seconds Floyd spent suffocating under the knee of a White police officer were hardly the first time he faced oppression.
Throughout his lifetime, Floyd’s identity as a Black man exposed him to a gantlet of injustices that derailed, diminished and ultimately destroyed him, according to an extensive review of his life based on hundreds of documents and interviews with more than 150 people, including his siblings, extended family members, friends, colleagues, public officials and scholars.
The picture that emerges is one that underscores how systemic racism has calcified within many of America’s institutions, creating sharply disparate outcomes in housing, education, the economy, law enforcement and health care.
While Floyd’s life span coincided with many advancements for Black Americans — some of them dramatic — his personal path highlights just how much those hard-fought gains remain out of reach for millions like him.
“My mom, she used to always tell us that growing up in America, you already have two strikes,” as a Black man, Floyd’s younger brother Philonise said in an interview. “And you’re going to have to work three times as hard as everybody else, if you want to make it in this world.”
Like many Black Americans, Floyd was behind long before he was born.
A descendant of enslaved people and sharecroppers, he was raised by a single mother in a predominantly Black Houston neighborhood where White flight, underinvestment and mass incarceration fostered a crucible of inequality.
In the crumbling Houston public housing complex where Floyd grew up — known as “The Bricks” — kids were accustomed to police jumping from cars to harass and detain them. His underfunded and underperforming public high school in the city’s historically Black Third Ward left him unprepared for college.