A mural and memorial in Minneapolis near where George Floyd was murdered. The mural lists the names of other Black lives lost to police brutality and reiterates the importance of “saying our names.”
One year ago, the nation turned its gaze from the rising pandemic and the subsequent financial fallout to witnessing a viral video of George Floyd Jr.’s murder by Minneapolis police officers over a dispute about a counterfeit $20 bill. Despite a near-complete society shutdown, people all across the nation took to the streets to register their frustration with the frequency with which Blacks’ lost their lives to police and vigilante violence.
In the months previous to Floyd’s death, Ahmaud Arbery was stalked and killed by white men while jogging—his life taken because of white supremacist assumptions about Black bodies and criminality. Less than a month later, Breonna Taylor was killed in her own home as plainclothes Louisville police served a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night. By the time of Floyd’s death, the toll of the pandemic and the violence was more than the public could stand. If Black people were not safe in their homes, on a jog, or on a city street in broad daylight, where and what measure of safety could they find? This is why the streets were filled with protestors last summer. Beyond the protests, which had massive attendance and lasted for weeks, individuals, government entities, and corporations alike began speaking out against these incidents and the racist assumptions that permeated the thoughts and policies leading to these incidents.
Our own Prairie View A&M University president took steps to signal to our campus community that the killing of George Floyd was reprehensible and required an institutional response. In a message, President Ruth J. Simmons outlined a series of actions we would take to address the larger issue of senseless violence stemming from a rise in racial hostility in our country. Among those actions was the establishment of a center for race and justice. This Center, now called the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice, would engage in research and policy projects that teach our students about the historic struggle against racism and mitigate the current impact of racism in our society. According to President Simmons, “Fighting racism and discrimination and upholding justice must always be among our highest callings.” We have taken this as our mission and marching orders as we worked to establish the Center and plan for our first projects.
In the last year, we have all witnessed an enormous amount of change and tragedy. There have now been over 30 million positive cases of COVID-19 and nearly 600 thousand deaths. Black and Latinx Americans have suffered a disproportionate number of deaths and are overrepresented in frontline workers who lacked the ability to quarantine. Black and Latinx deaths from the virus have far outpaced whites. These groups are three times more likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to die from COVID-19. The numbers are even higher for Native Americans. Three out of ten frontline workers are Black –nearly double their representation in the population. Our community has not been spared. Because of safety concerns, we have not been together as a university community for over a year. Our lives have been measured in Zoom hours, and the small but impactful interactions of running into fellow students and colleagues are impossible. We know that when we come back together, there will be absences.
Surprisingly, we also witnessed a measure of justice in the ongoing fight against police violence. Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of multiple murder counts in the murder trial of George Floyd. The fact that the Chauvin case made it trial at all was a rarity. It was also exceptional because the Minneapolis police chief and several officers testified against Chauvin and made clear that he had violated police training and policy.
The case was also particularly heartbreaking because of the testimony of the children who recorded and witnessed his death. Their testimony, offered with great emotion and detail, captivated millions watching because they seemed to speak for the innumerable children who have seen violence as bystanders and repeated showing of viral videos of Black death. In the end, the jury delivered a guilty verdict, and it offered a temporary moment of relief. Within minutes of the verdict, Ma’Khia Bryant was killed by Columbus police officers after she had called 911 for help. Within days, Jacob Blake, who was killed by police in a Minneapolis suburb during the trial, was eulogized by Al Sharpton.
But, at the same time, the Simmons Center was active as well. After receiving approval from the Texas A&M University System, we set about dreaming and planning to build capacity and engage in robust discussions about big ideas that can better society. Part of that capacity building is learning more about ourselves and our role in forwarding justice in our state and the nation. We are engaging in a self-study of the impact of slavery and segregation on our campus and establishing an HBCU Voting Rights Lab to deal with past and current attempts to suppress Black votes. We are also looking for collaboration partners in the region and the nation. We are partnering with the City of Houston Public Health Department and Morehouse College to do Implicit Bias training with youth service organizations. We have received generous donations and grants to support this work. We have also chosen 18 of our undergraduates, who will be embedded in all the work we do next year. You can learn more about the Simmons Center by watching the beautifully moving virtual launch we did in March.
On a more personal note, I am aware that the launch of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice will forever be tied to George Floyd’s tragic death. The end of his life marks the beginning of work that has consumed my year. I know that I have mentioned some aspect of this Center in nearly every single conversation. George Floyd’s life, legacy, and death, along with the current push for greater voter suppression, signal a personal urgency for this work. The generation of students on our campus right now will be enlisted to develop solutions to the racial problems we are watching form before our very eyes. In my teaching and work in the Center, I see equipping students with historical models of overcoming racism and critical skills to think beyond their current circumstance as a professional and moral obligation.
Each year as we commemorate the unnecessary and inhumane loss of George Floyd, I hope that we can point to activities, lectures, papers, and other projects the Simmons Center has produced to honor that loss and prevent the loss of others like him. And that we can say our achievements were manifested in a spirit of widespread collaboration across the campus and the larger society.
Melanye Price, Ph.D., is an endowed professor of political science and director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice at Prairie View A&M University.